eSignature Legitimateness for Quality Assurance in United States

How to eSign a document: e-signature legitimateness for Quality Assurance in United States

hello and welcome to the third and the council for higher education accreditation international quality group webinar series on quality assurance and combating academic corruption I'm to defeating the president of of Chia we're very pleased you could join us today more than 230 people signed up for this webinar from 50 countries so we look forward to a rich and thoughtful conversation on this very important topic it is my pleasure to introduce dr. Irene Glendenning of the office of teaching and learning of Coventry University in the UK Irene is our moderator and leader of our conversation today she is also the project leader for an important research effort by Chia and C iqg on quality assurance and combating corruption Irene Thank You Judith so good morning good afternoon good evening depending on where you are in the world we have we have three very interesting panelists from the USA from Africa and from Europe today to help us with this this webinar let's just start by looking at the reference point so just over a year ago Sir John Daniel produced the Advisory statement for effective international practice and that is the reference point for this webinar it is also the reference point for some research that Judy's talked about that I'm leading so on behalf of chair in the C iqg my team are going to survey accreditation and quality assurance bodies throughout the world to find out what they are doing about corruption in higher education and in particular we're looking at what the AQA B's are doing about all the different issues that weren't we focusing on are they good practice examples to share and what more can be done and who would be responsible for for taking those kind of actions I'll talk a little bit more about this at the end of the webinar and also about how you can get involved in the research next slide please so the scope of the webinar and also of the research that we're conducting is based on Sir John Daniels advisory and there are six points it's quite broad so we're looking at the regulation accreditation and so on of higher education systems and corruption in that area we're looking at corruption in the teaching role in higher education admission recruitment Student Assessment credentials and qualifications and also corruption in research and publications so very very broad scope and so Nick next slide please so the way that we're going to conduct the webinar is I've asked each of the three panelists to introduce themselves and also to answer an initial question that I set them and I'll show you that question in a minute I'm then going to ask each one of the panelists just a few follow-up questions based on what they've said and then I'm going to open it up to you so any questions that you have typing your questions into the chat and and then I'll hopefully I'll be able to pick as many of those questions as possible when we come to the the general part so once we've dealt with a set of questions on the statements that the panelists have made we'll then open it up to questions on any of those six areas of corruption mystics areas of corruption in higher education I hope that's all very clear we've got about an hour and a half to two do the to do the webinar which isn't very long when you consider the scope of what we have to do so next slide please okay so I'm going to start off by introducing Carol and then I'm going to introduce Peter and then later Colin so let's move on to Carol Carol is the immediate past president and CEO of the Council of accreditation of counseling and related educational programs so over to Carol all right well good morning to everyone it's it's only 9 o'clock in the United States which is where I'm calling in or internetting in on this webinar this morning but I want to make a couple of statements about academic corruption and then I'm gonna focus on one area that I think has been an area of concern here in the United States and with some of the accreditation Quality Assurance bodies here and that statement is just simply that the idea of academic corruption is really not a new concept I think it's important that we're having a focused conversation on it because number one it's not new number two it's not new but it's still proliferating and it's interesting that we have this renewed focus I think some of the reasons we're having it is the globalization of higher education is one of those reasons we have a lot of movement of professionals across borders and so academic credentials are very very important and the legitimacy of academic credentials are important I think the value of degrees in terms of your social and economic mobility is another reason we're having this and as the value of those degrees has gone up so has the the need for people to find ways to maybe claim academic credentials they don't have in a different kind of way and of course then there's the cost of degrees today so we see a lot of reasons why academic corruption may be having a renewed focus but when I say it's not new I want to just give you a little bit of a history lesson at least here in the United States the idea of combating fraudulent academic degrees and credentials of other kinds is really one of the things that created accreditation in the United States and you can go back to the late 1800s and basically it was that there were quacks and when you look at the the Nisshin of what a crack is in the dictionary you'll see it's the use of public and fraudulent claim to skills and knowledge in areas for which you've had no training medicine was one of the first you know and you heard about doctors that really didn't have training and it's a danger to the public and so combating this was one of the reasons that that accreditation got started in areas such as medicine engineering physical therapy architecture things that were about the public health safety and welfare of of your societies but there's still a lot of challenges and I want to just outline some of the challenges that we're still seeing today because we have a proliferation of degree mills now so people that are claiming to offer degrees that teach these kinds of things but we also have accreditation Mills so there are organizations out there that that want to say that an institution can claim a false credential to high quality we have individuals that are willing to purchase diplomas and if you've ever gone online and seeing what some of these diplomas look like they really they look legitimate and they use them to verify claims on resumes for degree attainment that they haven't had one of the other challenges is degree attainment that comes from completing research for example for a PhD where you made up or you fudged your data and that just recently happened I saw an article last week where a professor at a Western institution was stripped of her PhD for falsifying her data she was kept on by the way at the institution where she was working but nevertheless she was stripped of the PhD by the institution that granted it and then we also have faculty that are now serving at multiple institutions in claiming to be full-time and how does that affect the quality of the institutions finally another challenge I think of looking at the fraudulent use of academic credentials is with institutions themselves and even legitimate institutions have been caught quote fudging the data in order to increase their rankings and such publications is US News and World Report so next slide please so one of the things I thought would be helpful as we begin this discussion is to look at what one professional accreditor has tried to do in response to this single area of challenge and that is the falsification of credentials and or qualifications so in terms of institutions making claims of legitimacy that may not be there such as degree Mills a professional accreditor has said well we're going to require regional accreditation here in the United States and that way we know that the institution has to be licensed it's been reviewed at the institutional level and the program must be legitimate and it's not going to be within a degree mill and that's very very important in terms of the faculty a policy was developed to say that you can only be core faculty at one institution at a time so regardless of whether you're teaching a course here or there in another institution there's a policy and we the organization actually looks at that to make sure that they're not teaching in two programs at the same time finally the accreditation standards require a review of the faculty credentials and along with a statement of integrity about what comes in as part of the accreditation process the institution is required to have clear and honest representation where the accreditation can be invalidated and then finally and I think this is a really important one for professional and specialized accreditors when the accrediting agency works collaboratively with the professions credentialing agencies that would be your national certifications your licensing bodies that might license your engineers license your physical therapists license your professional counselors and that's to ensure that they understand the legitimacy of looking at an accredited program for degree attainment in terms of seeking those outside credentials next slide please so that's just a basic overview and some of the challenges that are faced and how one accreditor is responding but I think one of the things that we need to talk about is how do we get this discussion in general I I did a brief survey and it was not it's not a legitimate survey but it was just to sort of get some information back from accreditors on what they were talking about in terms of academic correct the corruption within their boards of directors or organizations and while the regionals were talking about academic corruption a lot the specialized in professional accreditors in the United States were not having those same kinds of discussions however they are dealing with it so I gave some quotes from the different types of accreditation here in the United States and you can see them on the slide here but the regional accreditors said any breach of integrity moves us to some kind of an action and so academic corruption is seen as a breach of integrity whether it's in student cheeked cheating false degrees of faculty whatever and so they would go to some kind of sanction national institutional accreditor and I did have permission to use deaq's name which is our distance education accreditation Council has taken a lot of different actions and believes it's really a responsibility and they discuss academic corruption a lot and they're working with their institutions through their standards through their policies through their testing requirements and then from a specialized professional accreditor again because that was one of the reasons accreditation was created they believed that the standards and the policies outlined in the manual require the integrity but not necessarily having the proactive discussion so I'll stop there because I know we have a lot more to to discuss during this webinar but I wanted to sort of give a little bit of overview and pick one of those areas on the falsification of credentials and degrees to focus on for my introduction thank you Thank You Carol that's very very interesting can I just ask you just a couple of little questions first of all can you explain to me what accreditation mills are and how they how they operate that really sounds quite a serious type of corruption to me well it actually it actually is a very serious type of corruption in and that's one of the things that I think within the last five years we've probably seen that is is out there and the idea of accreditation of course is that you put with on an institution or a professional training program that Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval that it has met the standards set by the either the national standards for the profession or for institutional accreditation and what we've seen as as accreditation and quality assurance of higher education has taken hold around the globe we've seen a credit just as we've seen institutions rise up that really are not legitimate institutions that you can buy a degree from we've seen accreditation mills pop up where you can buy that Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval without necessarily going through a self-study or an external review process I'll give you an example of one and and that happened a few years ago it was in South America and luckily because I have been involved in some international Quality Assurance organizations for a number of years one of my colleagues in South America notified me that they had gotten a letter saying that there was this organization that was willing to review institutions and that they were partnering with my organization and the letter saying that they would consult and provide this this review service actually used the logo from my organization at the time CACREP as well as the Inc wha-hey logo was on there and several other accreditors I think there was one from Europe and they said that you know they had worked with us and that we were they were respected by us and they were offering these services and so that's an example of something that has not gone through any kind of national system of recognition for an accreditation and was an accreditation now so that's just sort of an example and I know when I was on The Enquirer membership committee and reviewing people that wanted to be full members which would be your Quality Assurance review agencies we had a couple of applications from what we considered to be accreditation mills and basically said no you're you're not eligible for full membership within an qua hey so I have actually seen them firsthand they're pretty slick yeah that's really very very worrying but great concern thank you very much Karen I'm sure there be lots of questions on that I'm not going to pass over to our to our next panelist we have the next slide please so I'm very happy to welcome Professor Peter okey-okey buccola who is the president of the global university network for innovation in Africa thank you Peter the floor is yours yes I'm happy to share my thoughts on this topic giving you views from Africa the next replace it's a delight that the webinar is coincided with the conclusion of a higher education conference that was held not too long ago where we had participants from 22 countries and we considered the issue of academic corruption as one of the major themes that conference ended the 22nd of September and we highlighted quite a number of the types of academic corruption during the conference and reached number of reservations for the purpose of this webinar our focus on two of them our focus on academic corruption related to research and publications as well as academic corruptions meeting two credentials and qualifications covered in excellent place the conference as I said reached a number of resolutions and there were case studies of exemplary practices that will be aspects that I will be discussing at this webinar the let's take the matter of research and publications we our case tourists from Nigeria from Senegal and from Uganda on with in which this type of academic corrosion can be tackled one major way which was reported by participants especially from the countries that were case study is establishing a policy led court well publicized policies or academic corruption and not just led policies indicated were the penalties are for transgressive penalties for breaching any of the policies and the question insurance agencies in these countries and many others have put in some of these policies as part of the minimum standards minimum standards for quality assurance and acquisition the other is the publication by universities in this countries are many others of what as we consider to be the list of joiners filled journals will meet those with well very weak a trapeze with just like kind of cash and carry you bring your paper you pay some money and you get published this is corruption in research and publication and so a list of such figures is published and continually reviewed updated by the universities so is a deterrent for those people what promotion or want to be recognized and publish in such Joyner so it is why dissemination of the policies and why determinate dissemination of the journals the other as I said beyond the matter of adapting policies or mission list is deterrence now a number of stuff academics that would you call faculty the US or the academics powerful teachers in the British system i've i've been disengaged and be sacked from the universities on account of corruption in research and publications so when you cook your data and you plagiarize you are in or track to being disciplined usually the penalty is sacked from the universities from the university and not just sat and the information kept within the university that's why publicity in nigeria for instance you know people academic staff who are engaged in materialism in cooking data or - of research of publication corruption publish the names published in the media next slide please now the the corruption deterrence as I said is a major major plug in a certain deterrence so let's move on to this second of the two areas that I have indicated at tackling corruption in credentials and qualifications I'm going to bring you now case studies from Burundi from Ghana and Niger f was that up in me in this country's to tackle a creamy corruption in credential now one of them is crucial of the countries that into issuing out credentials that are qualifications that are doubtful quality with a country close down the other is if you perchance get a qualification from that is that a credential a qualification that will obtain to through corrupt means the institution does engaging you or institution that is taking you on for graduate studies on other tracks will not recognize the Croatia one two continental move that is helping that has a high chance of a political corruption in credential it is the addis ababa convention now this is the new form of the Arusha convention so it used to be as a convention eyes in the ADIZ convention which is about mutual recognition of degrees diplomas and certificates and mobility of staff as two days across a region that's africa the artists compilation implicitly addresses food credentials and if you call the food croatia to nigeria mobile students with multiple staff and would not be able to take you or not so these are some case studies of exemplary practices of good practices in tackling a gaining a Tremec corruption in this two areas one on researcher publications the other of credentials and qualifications i think that that's it for from my eight I think well I think we'll move on we'll come back to you later on with some more questions thank you very much indeed thank you sir so can we have the next slide and really very pleased to welcome from from Europe colleague took who is the director of the European Quality Assurance register for higher education over to your Colin depending on where you are so I I have a few words without slides on the topic I have to say I was a bit in difficulty when I was asked the question to pick out one specific type I think if you look at the European higher education area it is a very very diverse region and thus also the the scope and the types of corruption are probably very diverse in higher education systems in this 48 countries that make up the region in which we're working and I think that is also mirrored in quality assurance arrangement so if you if you look at different countries in Europe especially the role of external Quality Assurance and external Quality Assurance agencies play is can be extremely different we have some some countries where external quality assurance is mainly enhancement oriented and really very much focusing on the institution's their own responsibility for quality and then we have maybe other extremes where countries are having a very detailed program accreditation regimes that were sometimes initially established to really clean up a mushrooming sector of a lot of loads of small a very small private provider some of them offer a questionable quality and that's something that we have seen in especially in some states with let's say weak governing with a weak political structure where sort of a regulation vacuum existed in some countries maybe after times of war political big political changes and that allowed and sometimes this kind of mushrooming that agencies were addressing but in general I think since the in our bottom line in a way is that of course the main responsibility for quality of higher education and and thus I think also the main responsibility for addressing corruption of course always lies with the higher education institutions so especially I think if you look at corruption and the classroom so to say I mean we have to bear in mind that this is mainly internal Quality Assurance mechanisms that can take care of that whereas external quality and the agencies can always check what is being done and support that things are being done but they cannot act directly on those but then of course I think the things I would pick out this of course other types of corruption mainly also those that were mentioned by Carol the agreements fraud in fulfilling quality standards and that kind of things these are caused issues were Quality Assurance agencies in Quality Assurance bodies can act upon directly where they're more directly involved with what is happening one example that I had on my mind when preparing for this webinar is an interesting case of institutions trying to before the the Quality Assurance body in demonstrating fulfilment of standards I think it's very similar to to the example that Carol has mentioned although maybe a little bit complicated by the fact that it sometimes involves a cross-border component so so there are some agencies that face this situation that in order to demonstrate the fulfillment of minimum minimum standards for a number of academic staff teaching or researching in a study program there are sometimes presented credentials suvs they represented a person as a full-time professor who is also a full-time professor and to other institutions were sometimes presented a person as a full-time professor who doesn't even know that he's a full-time professor there and is sitting in a neighboring country and not aware of their CV being being presented so of course that has been I think a big challenge for some agencies and especially those where where neighboring countries are involved and some of them had to really set up mechanisms to get in in contact with institutions in foreign countries to double check whether these people are not also employed somewhere else or they're sometimes all even cooperating with Social Security our authorities in their country and other countries to to sort of verify what a person that is presented as a full-time staff is not also full-time staff somewhere else and there's actually no about the fact one second point I want to mention is about generally about I think we have succeeded in establishing a very strong regional framework for quality assurance and in Europe that in itself is a sort of something that promotes transparency integrity of the quality assurance process and in a way that's maybe the Nemesis of corruption in itself so we have an agreed set of standards and guidelines the European standards and guidelines ESG and what thing is that the issue of academic fraud is mentioned in relation to issues that internal quality assurance system should should take into account that's something that has been added to a guideline to a standard which wasn't there in an earlier version but came in newly into it in the 2015 version and also they the latest edition of the standards highlight the need for Quality Assurance agencies to ensure integrity in they're working to ensure integrity of their own processes which is also something that has newly newly come in and then our role as a European register of Quality Assurance agencies is to be a sort of a wide list of reputable trustworthy Quality Assurance bodies those that have demonstrated to a very serious process that that they do substantially comply with the Signet standards so in that way the idea of setting up a European version of Quality Assurance agency and serve was also and an effort to to prevent others from from being able to get in ground to gain credibility in Europe by having that were a wide list of reputable agencies and there have been interesting cases of classical accusation versus Carroll has mentioned but they have also been cases of one reputable agencies web presence being entirely plagiarized and d to buy another disreputable establishments so so the idea of course is to have to have a register which allows you to find out we were really dead serious providers and to find the way to their right we're cousins even one thing that of course we don't have at the moment is a wide list of of institutions you're white one thing that we are working on now in a course to establish in addition to the register of Quality Assurance agencies to also work on a common database of higher education institutions and programs are having quality or short in line with the with the ESG by any of those agencies so that would allow its to find more easily which institution has gone through a sound quality assurance process at least that's as much I would want to say for the introduction thank you thank you thank you very much Colin that stuff that was very interesting I particularly interested in this white list of Quality Assurance bodies that sort of ties up with what carol was talking about earlier with these accreditation males I would just wanted to ask you a quick question I mean as you say 48 countries that's under your jurisdiction in Europe so what powers do you have what what measures and actions can you take to encourage Quality Assurance bodies to take corruption and misconduct seriously well I think first and foremost that the biggest step that we still have to take for a lot of countries is to make sure that there is a well-functioning Quality Assurance system in the first place I think if there is a really functioning system that ensures transparency that it will make it much more likely that instances of academic corruption will be uncovered and but even though as you said we have 48 countries in Europe I mean you said us diction it's not that we are that we have any any such means to since we're based on voluntary cooperation of course between those countries but only 20 are at 23 out of the 48 countries have really established a full-fledged Quality Assurance system in line with the European standards and guidelines so there are still 25 countries where there is no quality assurance system at all where there's no quality assurance system that that that really takes into a mode all the agreed guidelines in terms of transparency and stakeholder involvement cetera and so there's still some way to go and I think of course there are also some countries among the 25 that don't have a fully functioning Quality Assurance system yet that have huge prevalence of corruption okay thank you thank you very much Colleen that's that's it's really very interesting yeah I use the word jurisdiction very very loosely and yes it's interesting that only twenty three hundred forty eight countries have what you call it a fully fledged Quality Assurance system that recognizes such so we are now handing the questions over to the audience and so we have one question and I'll put the question to all three of you I don't know who wants to answer it first so the question is what work has been done in the area of economic financial corruption in higher education it isn't part of the list of questions that we looked at but it's an interesting question so who would like to take that question that have a go answering it economic economic and financial corruption in higher education Peter have you anything to say about that yes yes I can hear you now we do study aside from academic corruption there is a huge effort towards tackling financial corruption financial corruption in the education system will mean I went through the contract of award process not through due process and which will lead to leakages in the monies that come into the universities now what has been enduring Angela is to set up the anti-corruption academy what Article II does is to build capacity of the managers of the universities in in all the all the protocols all the policies all the laws that guide financial transactions in the higher education system so well the vice-chancellor will be the president and members of and all of those trade and if they then for foul of the loss of the land regarding the finance of the university then two organizations what is called the economic and Financial Crimes Commission efcc and then the independent quadratus is another offices Commission a CPC there are two other positions in Nigeria that that prove a sanction any financial financial corruption in the system so what preventive both preventive and curative right thank you Peter thank you very much any quick any comments from parallel : on that on that we've come across economic or financial correction in your area well I'll take a stab at it and it certainly is not an area of expertise for me but I do know that when our institutional creditors are looking at an institution all of the site visits of course have someone who is responsible for taking a look at the financial health of the institution and so that that's one important part of it and of course they look at what the trustees and their role at managing this is however I will say that it's very interesting I think it was just in The Washington Post a couple of days ago that I was reading an article and there are several institutions that are being looked at in terms of misuse of monies in their sports programs and it's in there as it's in the the recruitment of people for their athletic programs whether it's football and as you know college sports are very big in the United States or football programs basketball programs etc so they were looking at a bribery suggesting that that there were financial recruitment policies that were not necessarily things that should be looked at and actually that's being looked at by the governor so outside of the external Quality Assurance agencies the federal is that the federal government here is actually doing an investigation but I can't I can't speak more thoroughly to that question anything to add : no I think what Garrett said is right that I think all Quality Assurance processes would look at the general financial health of an institution but I think or maybe it will be very difficult for some for some creditors to engage very much with with financial management more than they already do and I think we should also be aware that they have because other bodies especially when they think of public universities I think most of them would be subject to to supervision or control by Court of Auditors and other bodies who who might have better tools to address more specifically financial corruption sometimes okay thank you I have an interesting question here now ignite I would like to know the answer to myself from the audience should academic integrity policy be made mandatory as part of quality assurance and should those involving academic corruption fraud not not public be publicly named and shamed to curb the malpractice okay who would like to take that one for the first part I think the European standards quite clearly say that in general there is an expectation that institutions in the internal quality assurance policy what address also academic malpractice and measures to guard academic integrity so in that way it is clearly contained and involve and guidelines to have that when it comes to naming and shaming I think that's that's was a sensitive topic and that also comes in touch with the general rules for for criminal investigations and who who can be named as such as there probably is something that has to sort of happen in compliance with national laws as well probably that which probably determine in which case somebody who is accused of a crime asked her such as corruption may be named they may not be named okay from what colin has said and that is III agree with everything he said you know we are in an era of greater call for transparency and but naming and shaming especially if you live in a litigious society and and in the United States we have an abundance of lawyers that are willing to take cases on I think you have to be careful about how you present information so you know for example with with our Quality Assurance agencies if there are sanctions put on an institution if your chair recognized you need to be making public information that you know there are things that have been cited within a review process so I think those things can really really help but honestly I know that in some of the the work that I've done has been very helpful to me when I've seen lists and you know that we have a state here in the United States it has a list of degree mills and it's very useful to be able to go to a list and to be able to see someone that has said you know we've looked at this and we believe this is a corrupt institution or not a valid institution and so there is something to be said for for being named and being able to go to that list yeah I think of maybe understood the question a bit exclusively relating to individuals I think and especially since we are now discussing about quality assurance I think in as a quality assurance professionals and what quality assurance agencies possibly could do I think that's of course more naming and shaming the institutions the organization's rather than the individuals and I think it's as ask our refer to this list of the agreements and of course that's naming and shaming institutions rather than individuals where I think concerns are much less about privacy or anything like that and in a way of course that's that's maybe the main focus of attention here okay thank you very much indeed comment anything from you yes the contests are different in Nigeria context policy it was a policy and if you are total that if you fall foul of the law these are the sanctions and you are aware of it as soon as you transgress and you go through the due process of litigation either locally locally at the university or and in the course of law then you are named well you're named you ashamed you find in nine different newspapers report cases where students and staff that have be found guilty of examination of our practice and other fraudulent activities that put under the jail free walk of academic corruption reported you see a movement you do not report this then you let others be potential they those who will want to get into those routes easy easy so in our context we named them unashamed okay thank you thank you for that and your last comment from anyone I shall we move on another question okay I've got a questioning of Carol from the audience in your experience do you see a correlation between degree Mills and visa males as it relates to academic corruption I don't have any experience with visa Mills and certainly that seems that that would be a national government issue if there are if there are these Emile's out there so you know I guess if students really wanted to seek a visa to a specific country geez I I just don't have any experience to really answer that question about visa mills so whether there's a correlation or not I don't know yeah I've not come across that before interesting question this is a question I think this probably and is aimed at Peter but but it's certain to all three if you want to answer and should those are tough fraudulent and those that simply make a serious mistake be treated and named separately differently maybe because Peter was saying naming and shaming how do you distinguish those that actually make make genuine mistakes and those that actually are behaving in a in a correct way yeah you see when the rules are not the framework for breaking the rules given so if you just out of ignorance you plagiarize or you cook data and if you're cooking of data or you're plagiarizing materials for within the rules then ignorance of the law is no excuse I repeat ignorant of the law is no excuse so you are walked through the due process of investigating of discipline and then the sanctions are applied and you are shipped so if you are ignorant of it does not excuse for for for for the law thank you Peter any other thoughts : do you any comments well I think agree with what Peter say in general ignorance of the law is no excuse but I think of course it is important that and in a way we if someone is a frost and we want to name and shame somebody that we name and shame a frost as a fraudster and somebody who makes a mistake is somebody who makes mistake and I think if if one is very transparent about about an investigation or whatever has been found I think transparency can be the key because if we are very transparent about what someone has done then I think it will give a full picture if it was a fraudster or a serious mistake of course I think we shouldn't we shouldn't put people who who made a mistake on the same level maybe by negligence on the same level with someone who commits fraud with the full intention so I think it it is important to be transparent about what we have found so that everyone can see what what someone has done displaying ashamed okay thanks thanks for that we've got a question here quite an interesting one two of you raised the issue of it was Carol and Colin both raised the issue about staff working at different institutions and claiming to be full-time or people kind of used to make up numbers and things like that and the question is this what is your thought on being full time stuff at one institution and being part-time that another is this a form of corruption is a question Colin well I mean first of all I think if if one questions of course do both institutions know about that and I think if of course if both institutions are fully aware of that then it might not be corruption on the other hand I would still find it highly questionable of an institution agrees to that someone is working full-time and still work somewhere else full-time obviously there will be nothing wrong if someone works part-time in two institutions or three institutions but if somebody works full-time somewhere and then has another full-time job or part-time job in another institution that does certainly raise some questions so I think the minimum will be that all institutions should be fully aware of that I mean I would be surprised if I have full-time staff and they have another job and I would know about that and then I think especially the institution where someone is full-time if they would agree that someone works part-time somewhere else I think there would be a lot of questions to be asked to say the least one of the things you know one of the things I came across quite a bit through my research is where academics particularly work have several jobs and they do that because because the pay is so bad and they do it just to make a decent living and one of the issues with that to do with with academic integrity is that they don't have allegiance to any particular institution because they're working at lots of different ones and they don't have time for things like following up on on student cheating cases so I you know I've come across that in that context any other any other comments about this kind of full-time part-time working Carroll I'm not sure that I would say that it's corruption that I would say that I question whether it's been practiced to be holding too many jobs but I know and I'll just give you an example of something I'm very familiar with and in my profession that I ran the the Quality Assurance agency for counseling we've begun to run into as an issue and so we did create a policy to to say you can't be court faculty where the corruption comes in is how you represent yourself so holding the the two jobs full-time at one may be part-time at another isn't necessarily corruption but it's how either you represent yourself on the faculty or how the institution represents you that could be considered corrupt Sophie if both institutions claim you is full-time well then that's a that's a problem if you claim that your full-time of both when you're really not then that can be a problem so and we've actually seen some slippery words you know use at some institutions where they wanted to find full-time differently and so full-time gets to be really part-time and so that again gets into what I consider more corrupt practices but I think that in the professions you've seen people academics in particular hold more than one job not necessarily institutions but often hold more than one job because they may be a full-time academic but they may have a part-time practice whether that practice is in counseling whether that practices in physical therapy and the professions actually see that as that can be a good thing because it keeps your hand in the actual practice areas that you're teaching so again the corruption comes in with how the representation is done whether it's in an accreditation review or whether how its put out there to students and again then I think the institutions I think Colin makes a good point to both institutions know and where's the academic integrity in the knowledge and again you begin to get into you know who's who's helping to you to create this knowledge that you're imparting the students so there's a whole lots of layers it's like peeling an onion and very very interesting do you want to add something to that if you can hear me I want to say that for me there are two conditions which should apply that will not make it academic corruption condition of the world is what Colleen said the two institutions where you are full-time and where you are pattern you'll know of this agreement the second is that which in my view is more important is that you must meet all your aggressions for students for your for the department for the faculty for the University where you are a full-time staff you must meet all your provisions it becomes corruption if you now on account of the pattern work that you are doing now not able to meet all your obligations to decision where you have full-time apartment in Nigeria the Quality Assurance agency approves that a faculty is a teacher can be full-time in one place and be part-time in another so by our regulation it is not academic corruption as I said it becomes corruption when you are not able to meet all the obligations to where you appointed full-time Colleen did you want to add I just wanted to run reflection what I think it's also a good example and it's maybe a point where Quality Assurance bodies can be cautious or reflect on how they formulate their standards for instance because it's actually if you formulate your standards in such a way that you say ok for every study program they have to be ten full time staff of course that might be more inviting to corruption of that kind of sort and if you focus the standards more on whether the staff that is running the program effectively able to fulfill their duties as Peter put it so what I wouldn't I wouldn't have necessarily helps you to declare somebody on on paper as a full-time staff if if a quality assurance process doesn't look so much on how many people there are written on paper but are these people actually there and doing what they are supposed to do excellent point thank you very much for that can I just invite the audience to keep you or keep your questions flowing we really like to hear from you and the questions can be on any one of those six points on Corrections they could be on on an assessment it could be on recruitment and admissions it could be on teaching any of those points and while waiting for more questions to come in I've got a question for you this is for all the panelists to what extent is the current situation about corruption different from the past I mean not have our standard shifted all right expectations different from the other used to be is a globalization of higher education factored in that it's the sharing of information across across nations across the world different so who would like to take that first I'll start Irene you know I mentioned in my opening statement that I felt that that that academic corruption was not a new topic at all but that we had a renewed focus on it and and I mentioned that I did think global globalization was one of the factors and and there's a lot of reasons for that we have a lot of movement of professionals across borders and it's people that already have degrees but we also have a lot of movement of students across borders and and it's not necessarily just physical movement it's also through distance education and so we have people being able to educate across borders so I think that we're all more highly aware of the need for good solid and non corrupt credentials both in terms of the institutions themselves the program's themselves as well as the professionals that are moving across the borders and so I think that that has played a factor in it and and as we have these professionals moving across borders we have all kinds of national systems that are impacted by it in terms of how the individuals are deemed qualified to practice whether it's an engineering or architecture medicine how the licensing occurs of those individuals and so we need to ways that we work together to ensure that we understand what are our quality institutions quality programs and quality individuals and so again that globalization connected with the high cost of degrees the value placed on degrees I think knowing that people have gone out and created ones has sort of created this this this renewed focus in this renewed energy that we all need to work together on this and we all need to be able to share information yeah can I continue from where Carol stopped yes yes please please go ahead can I step in now Irene Irene can I continue from we kind of stopped yes please Peter you asked the question then and now what is this shift in the academic corruption in terms of its visibility I think that because of the focus because yes because of the increase in advocacy against academic corruption by Chia and other others we are getting that just like Carol said the awareness puts the consciousness of people in the higher education to know that a great power corruption is something that we must avoid so I think academic corruption now would appear to be to be decreasing in terms of its its its visibility it's a porous and I think that in the years ahead about 10 years we are going to see little bit more of the deepening of yes of the manifestation academic corruption if the tempo the Vigo at which see chair and other national justice agencies put academic corruption on the agenda so globalization is also causing us to share experiences now we have this webinar and would be able to listen to what happens with what happens in Europe what I posted in in Africa so globalization will help to share the good news share case studies of exemplary practices and as I said over the next decades will begin to see less and less of corruption if we step up the tempo of this advocacy thank you very much Peter I hope you're right about with about the reduction of corruption over time but certainly I share your views that organizations like the chair and CI qg are doing a great job in raising the issue any further colleen and you've got anything you want to add on that on that question that globalization I've got some more questions coming in now so okay I have a question here from the audience Colin and Peter we think raised a great point and about how the policies of accreditation agencies for example and the full-time requirements could encourage corrupt practices have you got any more examples of that kind of thing I don't have a specific example that comes to my mind right now but I think in general of course all kind of very very numeric and very requirements of that kind like number of full-time staff maybe number of chairs in the classroom or whatever you could imagine all those of course in white certainly to a certain type of window dressing and I think at some point the borders between window dressing and corruption are certainly blurred so so in some way I could say of course all kind of criteria that really are looking at a qualitative judgment might be less prone to corruption than done strictly America criteria where you could try to to fabricate full time staff where you could try to fabricate classrooms or fabricate laboratories or whatever you could want to fabricate on the other hand I think I did hear from some agencies that day of course do you appreciate that and that relates a bit to some other question I saw about court cases of course if you have a very strict measurable criteria and you turn somebody down by not meeting is criteria you are very relatively safe in front of course or everywhere of course the viewers as soon as quality assurance judgments and decisions get very qualitative of course you are getting more into gray areas in general and you know of course more exposed to the agreements trying to appeal and question your decisions then I mean you can demonstrate that someone has been turned down based on very strict and straightforward criteria so I think it's it's a difficult balance to strike for Quality Assurance bodies okay thanks thanks very much yes that of Nigeria you cannot pull wool body eyes which I sure as agencies by way of FTE but we have number of students that you have and they try to like Kali was alluding to trying to manipulate it here in Nigeria you cannot manipulate it because of the checks and balances that we have in place I'll give you an example if you to enroll 50 students for net for medicine or law or engineering or for any program if a university decides to enroll easy and good at Ft value that is that that tries to fit in with the minimum standards then at the point of exit of the students we have a scheme is Khalid National Youth Service Corps scheme and did not reverse this commission where I served as a secretary 16 years ago will not allow one student above the 50 to be mobilized for the National Service Corps scheme so you're trapped as an institution so all these traditions try to abide by the FTE that you provide for them because if we say admit 100 because that will be your carrying capacity and then you end up admitting warranty and give us 4 yrs f FTE data then in four years time when your cells graduate only 50 would be eligible to be out there and then you'll be in trouble we look at students so over time these as balance itself out and video challenge with that thank you very much for that card you don't want anything on that one no I think I'm okay with I think the answer is though the window dressing answer is really apropos here in terms of if you're not careful you know you can win to address anything that's got the numbers attached to it but I think Peter makes a really good point about the number of students you know when we have when Quality Assurance agencies do have FTE ratio requirements exceeding those and I think is a problem for students and I think that because they're not going to get the same kind of education so I think that's a point that we is well taken thank you thank you very much for that commenting I want you to read this one out cuz it made me smile this is from Sir John Daniel he said the only time I was able to sack a faculty member without any hassle was when I discovered when I discovered he helped full-time faculty posts in both Paris and Montreal he did not contest the decision yes that made me smile that was very funny I've got another question here yes is there a written policy and procedure document about combating corruption in research and publication if yes please reference does anyone know if any I think there are some documents aren't they is anyone aware of any yes yes I'm aware we have but these are institutional policies if you come to my University liberal State University we have that as a policy is a research of publications policy and almost all the 153 universities that have enacted a policy I mean our policy all of these issues of academic corruption Maddie we would give that good enough sight John Daniel just come on we glean that from these John Daniels report under a platform of chair ciq G so many investors are taking extracts from their to develop their research and publications policy which you have provisions for so I I don't have any I can give out to anybody but they are policies that approved by all the universities in Nigeria now I think cope the organization kind of forgot the the initial stunts for now but I think they have guidelines as well so I think there are guidelines out there it's possible we might be able to circulate some some links for another resources is within the professions themselves because most most of your professions have ethical standards of practice as well as standards of contact conduct and within theirs those ethical standards and standards of conduct you will often see a section within different professions on both teaching and learning and research and so the professions have their own research codes in terms of ethical practice and research and publications so you know you might look within different professions within different nations and see what those ethical standards and how they address research and publication because a lot of them include statements about that thank you very good point I'm just gonna ask one more question for all of you and then we will move on to the final slide and finish off so the question is this how do you view validation of entire degrees from another country particularly when when no new studies are completed any thoughts on the question is it's an audience question how do you view validation of entire degrees from another country particularly when no new studies are completed so I guess it's actually giving a degree for someone who's completed so it's giving jewel awards isn't it a little differently so I'm gonna take a stab at the way I understood the question you know this has been this is again something that has occurred for a number of years especially I think in different professions so that let's just say that someone moves from from Great Britain and they moved to the United States and they wanted they want to practice within their profession and the United States says well in order to be licensed you have to have a degree that we recognize and so there are organizations that will do comparability studies of the degree in order to determine whether that degree makes you eligible to seek the license to do the practice and and I think it's one of those things that it and it's it's something that is sort of beyond the degree itself it rests with the licensing bodies themselves and whether or not they look at the degree as equivalent and whether or not they are willing to say we'll accept your degree you're now eligible to sit for the licensing exam get the supervision required here and then and practice the profession and so there are organizations that have done those once again that that raises a whole other issue and that is are those organizations that do the equivalency reviews are they legitimate or could there be review degree review Mills just as there are credit ation mills and degree mills so again you have to have the legitimacy of the organization and you have to have your licensing bodies who understand what this review is going to entail but of course in every one of those reviews the licensing body within the nation has the right to determine whether or not they will accept that degree but it's about mobility and I've certainly I've certainly come across that where a student from the UK has applied to do maybe a PhD in States and and they've had to look at that qualification to see whether it would be equivalent I wouldn't see a problem as long as it's validation in the sense of recognition of course which i think is what's what you described of course they've read well and then I would assume that it is very transparent that this is a validation often a qualification from another country and that sort of is a statement of comparability but it's not a degree of an institution where this person has never studied of course if you're talking about a university or other higher education institution awarding a degree to someone just on the basis of them having a degree somewhere else and not making it transparent that this is not really a degree of that University I think that could definitely be a questionable practice if you would just give it out a degree based on somebody having a degree somewhere else and no one could actually see that a person hasn't studied at that university and I think that would be a completely different matter and and for me an example of my practice I don't know what the question question posed I was referring yeah I would agree with you that was my interpretation of the question initially that was what it meant and we've got an answer on on two different interpretations so it was useful anything you want to add Peter really question the way Carol great that you have a degree from Ghana for instance and you want to come to Nigeria either to work or for your graduate studies and the employer employer or the university that you are applying to do your great studies we were to validate that certificate that you have so what normally happens is the national versus Commission is usually the first port of call that certificate is said the National versus Commission can you help us check the authenticity of this certificate and of course is what are they equivalent to the ones that we are running in Nigeria so what the national visas Commission will do would be to set a sexually departed not as a unit in the national business commission that takes a look at the courses that the person has done in Ghana it causes that were offering a Nigeria and four equivalents and that is the valuation process that would take this through there's also a department in the federal miss of education that works with national basis Commission in ensuring that this happens but on the long term we have this added condition that had made admission to the IDS Convention is for mobility of students and staff across the region that's Africa and also for recognition mutual recognition of degrees diplomas and certificates and so the this convention is now setting up protocols mechanisms for that kind of validation across Contras in the region okay thank you very much indeed for all the the questions and also the answers I'm going to now ask y'all to take us to the next slide please change of change of scenery okay well I'm going to start the summary by saying thank you very much for chair and see iqg for organizing the webinar I hope you've enjoyed it and I hope your your questions are answered and you've I think we've all learned quite a lot by listening to each other haven't we I certainly have what I want to finish off is with is just by telling you a little bit about the survey that we're just about to start it's an online questionnaire it's for accreditation and quality assurance bodies that's what we're aiming for we're hoping to get responses from as many as many accreditation agencies and Quality Assurance bodies across the world to answer questions it's quite a long survey but hopefully you'll be able to skip some of the parts that are not relevant to you because clearly we need to cover quite a wide scope and we were hoping the survey would be open now but we're a little bit behind in where we are where we were hoping to be so certainly the next two weeks we're hoping to circulate the link and so when you get the link please can you pass to someone within your organization who can answer the question the questions rather answer the survey and hopefully we'll get some very useful information and and what we're going to do hopefully is do some follow-up interviews where we get some really interesting evidence and particularly to explore good practice but we're looking for good practice we're also looking for where things are not being covered as well and and if I can just have a little advert for the International Day of action against contract cheating its next Wednesday on the 18th of October and if there is anyone there who is from particularly from universities from higher education institutions if you haven't signed up for that it's quite fun it's a way of actually raising a very important issue about about these companies who are completing work for students and doing lots of other things as well it's it's a really big problem that universities are facing across the world so we've we've got well over 50 institutions from almost every continent signed up so far and a lot more than I know they're going to be active so please help to support that if you can so finally thank you very much to the to the four panelists really interesting very very stimulating conversations and also thank you very much for all the participants for your interesting questions and over to Judy's I think the finish off by everyone well let me my thanks Irene to you Carol Peter and and Colin who had to leave us it was indeed a very valuable conversation and does move the discussion and consideration of this important issue forward we will be making the recording of the webinar available on the Chia website and we will be sending it to the participants as as well finally I want to echo Irene's comment about the survey we are about to launch to our colleagues in accreditation and quality assurance this is the first baseline survey worldwide of what quality assurance and accrediting bodies are doing with corruption and it is vitally important to all of us in addition let me echo Irene's urging with regard to the International Day of Action and the work of the center for academic integrity again many thanks to everyone we appreciate your being with us today