LAHORE (Staff Report) – While Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) raided on offices of Axact Company, which is accused of selling fake degrees online, and launched a thorough investigation following a report in NY Times, the newspaper has urged American Congress to take up the matter.
In an editorial article, New York Times went on to plead the congressmen to devise a coherent plan for curbing such kinds of abuses. “Congress, which has paid only glancing attention to this problem, needs to focus on it in a sustained way,” it stressed.
The editorial further reported that Axact is not the only company dealing in fake degrees but there many others as well. While quoting a book by the former F.B.I. agent Allen Ezell and his co-author John Bear, it asserted that there are 3,300 unrecognized universities worldwide, many of them selling degrees at all levels to anyone willing to pay the price, and that more than 50,000 Ph.D.s are purchased from diploma mills every year.
“The problem of bogus degrees and predatory schools goes well beyond one company in Pakistan. Still, the startling revelations that one outfit could cast such a wide net of duplicity give Congress and federal regulators the incentive they need to become much more aggressive at exposing fraudulent companies that pose as legitimate schools for the purpose of selling bogus degrees or luring people into costly but useless courses that lead nowhere.”
The newspaper has also reaffirmed that Pakistani IT company, Axact, has been running 370 websites to sell fake degrees online.
