How do you verify students admissions documents when applying to university? This is a huge problem.
With modern tools such as Photoshop, it’s easy enough to edit a document and change a name on it and its very hard to tell the difference.
Of course it’s highly illegal to make a copy and pass it off as genuine, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. How big is this problem? It definitely exists, and we can’t truly know the scale of the problem.
The problem is actually huge, some universities are manually checking each document by themselves with the issuing institution.
At the same time it is quite hard for universities to issue diplomas and certificates and admissions letters. Case in point – Ngee Ann Polytechnic issues 10,000 physical certificates every year – each of these certificates are printed, and manually stamped! In addition, the school also receives 2,000 requests annually for verification from both employers and universities. Put the two together, and you get tedious manual labour which takes up precious time and resources.
So as an admissions officer, how do you know if the document is real or not?
- Look for obvious signs it’s not real.
- A lot of the copies are badly done. They don’t look the same, missing signatures, etc.’
- Compare it to true versions of the certificates.
- Check it with the school that has issued the certificate. This is obviously very time consuming and almost impossible to do yourself.
- Hire a third party agency to check every document with the issuing school – this is also costly.
- Require it to be notarised (some info about getting notarised is here).
- Ask the student to bring the originals when they come to register in person.
- Supplement the interview process with an interview (such as the IET Test) and references
There is not really a solution by individuals to solve this problem. It needs an industry wide solution.
How can we solve this problem?
I actually think the solution to this is not 100% technical (such as the blockchain), its 50% technical, and 50% business – finding a good technical model that works for everyone and then having incentives so people use it – in the end everyone will benefit.
I don’t think there is a way to solve it technically because one of the main issues is how people work and how institutions work. So it needs a combined technical and people approach
- Proper recognition of documents. Training staff on what to look for, and to have a proper process of reviewing documents.
- We can use AI to scan images (and the students other information) to check if they are real or not or there might be any issues. This might be good
- Universities need to make an easier way for verifying the certificates that they issue.
- There needs to be a central database and system of documents and way for checking. This could be on the blockchain but it doesn’t need to be. You can check companies basic information on a central government database. The same should be true for certificates.
- There are some blockchain solutions – such as MIT, and Blockcerts, but they are not really ready yet. I don’t think it really needs to be on the blockchain because there are no transactions that are going on. Keep it simple stupid.
- I think a global database like the one for company registrations this would be better. The platform needs to sign the contracts with each university, and publish the certificates on the system, it would be behind a paywall or registration system, but it would only give access to certain people to check the verification of those documents. As a recruiter, admissions officer, or customs official, you could not see all of the documents but only some of them when you request to. You would need to buy a package or credits to check certain ones.
- Why would universities put their documents on there? Thats the big barrier. There is no reason for them to do that or change their system. But if students and other universities who have this problem are requesting them to, then it might start.
- I think the system would also need to have a paid service to check other documents not included and check that they are real or not and then put them onto the system.
- It would also be cool to have an app on your phone or computer software in an API that can check the database if its real or not (and build this API into admissions software solutions).
This is China’s system for verifying credentials CHESICC
I think that it makes sense for each country to have their own system, and then maybe a way for it to be combined into secure global APIs that people can use to speed up their work.
