An interesting topic came up while looking through education on the international scale. There is a global campaign for higher education internationalization, and it is found that an overseas degree is increasingly valuable, however it has been plagued with a specter of corruption as private institutions finds this as a profitable venture and some of them have been found as “less than honorable” looking at internationalization as a contribution to the all mighty “bottom line” – PROFIT.

Who would have thought that education would be involved in such corruption, well if business ethic principle serve us right, then according to Milton Friedman the social responsibility of business is to increase profits, so why is it a surprise that there are unethical practices being utilized when higher education is a billion dollar enterprise.  Here are a few examples and excerpts from Altabach’s 2012 article entitled “Corruption: A Key Challenge to Internationalization.” :

Problem

“A serious and unsolved problem is the prevalence of unscrupulous agents and recruiters funneling unqualified students to universities worldwide.”

“Altered and fake documents have long been a problem in international admissions.”

“Examples of tampering with and falsifying results of the Graduate Record Examination and other commonly required international examinations used for admissions have resulted in the nullifying of scores, and even cancelling examinations in some countries and regions, as well as rethinking whether online testing is practical.”

Solution

“The higher education community can recommit to the traditional “public good” values of internationalization, although current funding challenges may make this difficult in some countries.”

“[Accrediting] Agencies and the international higher education community must ensure that universities were carefully evaluated and that the results of assessment are easily available to the public and the international stakeholders.”

“Governmental, regional, and international agencies must coordinate their efforts and become involved in maintaining standards and protecting the image of the higher education sector.”

“Consciousness-raising about ethics and good practice in international higher education and awareness of emerging problems and continuing challenges deserve continuing attention.”

Also mentioned is the recognition of the problem, it seems as if its a 12 step program for recovering alcoholics. Essentially, the educational tree will always have a few bad apples, careful attention needs to be made to ensure that those rotten apples do not ruin the whole bunch. Let’s face it, business and ethics go hand in hand, whether the ethics are assumed negative or positive is left to the curator.

The full document can be accessed here>>>https://htmldbprod.bc.edu/pls/htmldb/f?p=2290:4:0::NO:RP,4:P0_CONTENT_ID:118595