Agents defraud students in Goa with invalid degrees, high fees

Panaji: Anita Rodrigues (name changed) found herself breaking down, a few years ago, after visiting the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) regional centre in Porvorim and learning that her multiple postgraduate degrees earned through ‘correspondence’ and ‘external’ means by paying thousands of rupees were invalid.

The Ignou centre receives multiple queries from police every year to verify certificates, which are invariably found to be fake.The certificates are sometimes issued at a price by scamsters to students who are fully aware it is fake, but, in a majority of the cases, the fraudulent certificates are issued by ‘agents’ who pose as authorised centres to issue ‘correspondence’ or ‘external’ degrees.“Students should know that the word ‘correspondence’ and ‘external’ are long outdated.

There is no such concept now. There are some who pose as centres and present students a list of universities from where they can issue a degree. Students should become suspicious if someone, for instance, says they can issue a degree from Sikkim or Jammu university. If Goa University cannot issue a degree to a student sitting in Sikkim or Jammu, how can it work the other way around,” said Ignou centre regional director G Shrinivas.

He said that only a university like Goa University established by an Act in the assembly and Ignou established by an Act in the Parliament can issue degrees.“Unless you are sent to that university to answer an exam in Sikkim or Jammu, for example, they cannot issue you a degree. Many come to us to do their masters degree and when they learn from us that their graduation degree is fake, they are in shock. ‘Agents’ also tell students they can answer all three years’ exams for degree programme at one go.

This concept of permitting answering of exams for all years at a time was stopped by University Grants Commission in 1989,” said Shrinivas.Rodrigues had to spend years answering doing her postgraduate programme again through Ignou, affecting her career growth. She learnt how she was scammed only after approaching Ignou to pursue her doctorate.“Now, it is not correspondence or external, there is only open and distance education in force.

Many universities like Shivaji, Annamalai, etc were offering programmes in correspondence and external mode in other states earlier. But in the 2000s, the UGC put a stop to this and said universities do not have jurisdiction outside their states.In the meantime, Rodrigues has been able to complete here postgraduate as well as doctorate programmes through Ignou.However, ‘agents’ have been found continuing to scam students openly operating offices across Goa, promising ‘external’ degrees.“Some of them offer students admissions to Ignou programmes using our website itself. Then they charge the students a fee of Rs 25,000 for a graduate programme on offer at Rs 5,000 fee at Ignou. They charge fee for every assignment, project or dissertation submission, which is actually free of cost. The ‘agent’ then drops off the assignment for free at Ignou centres. Students often realise after they have lost thousands of rupees and many precious years,” said Shrinivas.