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View all search resultsFake diploma: A tale of misconception on education
In his classic book Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich argues that schooling in general makes students confuse process and substance. The student is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning and grade advancement.
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Schools seem to perpetuate this misconception of education by instructing students to overvalue academic “scores”. (Shutterstock/File)
A
s an educator for several years, I have encountered countless experiences dealing with misconceptions in education. One is about the diploma. “The higher your diploma, the better your quality as a human”. Such a notion must be assessed very carefully; when the diploma is the final goal in pursuing education, everything will fall into pieces. We can expect mushrooming diploma forgery.
Document forgery and fake diploma are not new in Indonesia, notwithstanding regulations to mitigate the problems. Owners of fake education certificates have been identified as government officials, politicians, police officers, doctors and even university rectors.
The 2003 National Education System Law, for example, states that those who use fake degree and certificate of competency are subject to imprisonment for up to five years and/or fine up to Rp 500 million (US$37.5 million).
To stop fake diploma circulation, the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education has implemented National Diploma Numbering and Electronic Diploma Verification since January. The Minister himself announced all titles of professors who illegally received their titles from unofficial procedures would be stripped.
In addition, several education institutions have been closed down for allegedly offering an online document forgery service.
The high demand for fake diploma basically reveals that the problem is partly caused by the recruitment system in employment. The diploma certificate is generally the very first requirement in competing within the job market. No matter how competent the candidates, without those diploma certificates, they will never get a call from the company.
The certificate has become a commodity, and is regarded as the only valid measurement of “competence and learning.” That being said, the meaning of competence in education has also been shifted to mean “merely acquiring high grades.” Therefore, people crave for the highest grades in their diploma.
