Speaking in an exclusive interview with the New Straits Times (NST), the agency’s chief executive officer, Professor Dr Rujhan Mustafa, said SPM and STPM examination leavers were the targets of scammers, bent on raking in profits at the expense of these students’ future.
The scammers hide behind legitimate education institutions, and the students who fall victims to their greed end up with certificates that are not recognised by employers and other higher learning institutions,” he added.
“We’re noting a rising trend. From last year to this month (June), we’ve received more than 130 reports on violations involving 114 higher education learning institutions,” said Rujhan to the English daily.
He explained that the scammers usually started off legitimately, working as recruitment agents for higher learning institutions, but over time, violated this trust by taking in their own students.
“They went from recruiting to providing their own education programmes. Unrecognised ones, of course.”
He cautioned that the scam would jeopardise the future of youths as not only would they be deemed unqualified for any education loan and government job, but would also face difficulty in furthering their education.
“In the long run, this gives rise to other problems like fake certificates. Students desperate for a job would go for alternatives just to meet education requirements needed for them to pass the relevant interviews.”
According to the report, Section 92 of the Malaysian Qualifications Agency Act 2007 states that an authorised MQA officer is allowed to carry out a search on “the premises of any higher education provider” upon obtaining reasonable cause to believe that a delay in obtaining a search warrant would negatively affect the investigation.
However, an MQA officer, who spoke to NST on condition of anonymity, said this did not deter the scammers from exercising force to protect their interests.
“Recently, we were locked inside a building by the staff of an education institute we were investigating.
“They did that even after we showed them our authority cards and explained to them that the law allowed us to carry out the search,” she said.
“Some even went to the extent of claiming to be us (the agency), distributing fake offer letters with our logo and watermark to the public.”
Rujhan, commenting on this, said the agency, along with the Higher Education Ministry, had rolled out multiple measures to combat education fraud.
This included the Malaysian Qualifications Register mobile application meant to help the public verify the status of the programmes they were looking into enrolling.
“Despite this, the number of education scams is on the rise. There is indeed a profound need for stricter enforcement,” said Rujhan.