More on the Fake-Degree Scandal
by Brendon Carr
Fakes are endemic in Korean corporations, says the International Herald-Tribune yesterday. And we’re not talking about fake handbags—society is grappling with the problem of fake people who claim degrees they don’t have.
How do all these fakes get themselves hired? And why do Korean employers emphasize the degree to such an extent? According to the IHT, it’s because employment background checks are useless:
Although some companies conduct their own aptitude tests to detect the best job candidates, the dependence on academic degrees persists.
Joo Tae San, the chief executive of Maxmovie, an online movie and performance ticketing firm, said he had no choice.
“There is no other way to verify a person’s competence,” he said. “Calling former employers or professors for comments and recommendation letters aren’t helpful because they will either not comment or only praise the person.”
Park Hyo Chong, professor of national ethics education at Seoul National University, agreed that personal recommendations were seldom useful. When Koreans talk about other people, especially for job recommendations, he said, “they tend to highlight their pros and hide their cons.”
My experience has been that the idea of the “worthless” background check is overstated. The truth is, while the critics are correct in that former employers are reluctant to offer frank comments on a past employee, in our practice we often find that the background check is not done at all. And that failure allows the real fakers—those who never went to the university they claim, who overstate their degree, or who claim work experience they don’t actually have—to get in.
Why are Koreans reluctant to offer an honest assessment of former employees? There are indeed social prohibitions on direct talk. But there are also (of course, this is Korea Law Blog) legal reasons. First of all, defamation and insult are crimes under the Criminal Code. People who are too frank frequently end up at a police station or prosecutor’s office having their time wasted. Additionally, the Labor Standards Act Art. 39 prohibits an employer from “having communications for the purpose of interfering with employment of a worker”. This, too, is a crime. The net effect is to zip the lips of former employers.
Korea is not unique in the threat of legal harassment looming over the heads of employers. Americans, too, are quick to threaten “lawsuit” for allegedly unfair descriptions of their job performance. (Civil lawsuit is a different kind of threat from criminal prosecution, to be sure.) But the salient difference for multinational employers is that the oblique, indirect signals people use to communicate the truth are different from culture to culture. Since the signals are harder to read, a prudent employer will slow down, and double-check everything. Speed kills.
UPDATE 9/2: In the comments section I’ve pointed out the place Korean employers could go to verify many US degrees: The National Student Clearinghouse, which can verify attendance and graduation from over 1200 schools.
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I’ve noticed that Korean job seekers place a high level of confidence and importance on letters of recommendation. I have interviewed a lot of job applicants, a few Korean but mostly American, and the very first thing I do is disregard any letters of recommendation. I basically set them aside and not look at them. I don’t believe an applicant would submit a bad recommendation with their package.
I also am reluctant to provide recommendations to employees. Negative or degrading verbal or written statements about a former employee may cause you problems in the future.
This week I was asked by someone in the HR department at the government-connected company I work at to help check several advanced credentials singled out of the company files. Of the four, two struck me immediately as fakes. They weren’t diplomas, but alleged transcripts from accredited western universities. But it was clear that the originals had been printed in color on cheap inkjet printers. One printer needed a cleaning so badly that it was laughable that the document was presented in the first place. Other tell-tale signs were present when the dates of attendence were scrutinized (an MBA in ONE year?) and the phone numbers and addresses compared to those on the school’s website.
Another document appeared to be authentic as it was printed on security paper unique to the university. The last document was from an Asian university, and while it wasn’t very compelling (nor all that readable due to the language barrier), I still had 50% confidence.
Not having experience in checking credentials before, we decided to email the universities for verification. That’s when the other part of the verification problem became clear:
1. Koreans are afraid of English. We know this, but given that this is a sensitive issue many might be prone to freezing up when it comes to writing a letter on inquiry. The HR worker hadn’t even attempted a letter (yet had stressed over it all day); I cranked one out in a couple minutes.
2. Koreans don’t know who to contact. Even for a native speaker, navigating university websites is difficult. There usually isn’t any obvious link for graduation verification. You truly need to hunt. Even then, it’s unknown if they’ll be helpful through email.
3. Time zones. This makes it impossible to call some parts of the world during normal business hours (like North America).
With this experience I can partially see why so little has been done to check the validity of credentials. It’s not easy.
Thanks for your comment, Anonymous.
Korean employers ought to check out the National Student Clearinghouse, an institution to which most major American universities belong. Degree checks can be done on-line with a credit card.
What is, if any, the penalty for companies and universities for hiring an applicant who acts fraudulently?
My university uses the National Student Clearinghouse, and I gave the URL and that information to my employer the last time it asked for a degree. The minion unfortunate enough to have to deal with the issue took the URL to her superior, and then she came back to me. She said point blank, it cost too much money to use that service.
As much as I would want ROK companies to right this situation, and as much as I wish people with an intent to defraud would just not or not come to South Korea, what would the government do against the employer after it uncovered the employee’s or applicant’s actions?
Baltimoron, your school was correct: Six dollars and fifty cents per degree is an outrageous price to pay to verify this essential piece of an applicant’s background.
As for law establishing an affirmative duty of care for employers to do a background investigation on prospective employees, here is Korea. Prudence is not really the specialty of the house here.
I had a project a couple of years ago for a US children’s broadcaster (for its local joint venture licensee) which asked the same kind of question you asked. The US legal department was aghast at how little one can discover through public sources about whether or not someone applying for a job on a kiddy show is a kiddy diddler. But what surprised them most was that there was no duty of care imposed on the employer.
I think that the reason hiring officials don’t rely on references is because there is no guarantee that the person being hired will be a shining star or a bum. The majority of organizations have rules and regulations in place that benefits the company and the employee. I think hiring officials are savvy enough to know that employees leave because of management not the company.
(Math question) What are the odds of holding degrees from three different, accredited, U.S. schools (one college and two universities) and none being listed on the National Student Clearinghouse? Now I know why I never get past the application process.
Doug, there are a lot of US tertiary institutions which do not, for whatever reason, participate in the National Student Clearinghouse. There are something like 1500 community colleges and 2200 four-year institutions in the United States—total 3700. The National Student Clearinghouse has 1200 members.
But, most of the leading institutions—the ones which fakers would like to claim—are members.
Doug, UNESCO’s International Association of Universities online database of universties contains a list of more than 9,700 schools in 184 countries. If you’re having trouble convincing prospective employers that you’re ‘the real deal’, you could check to see if your almae matres are listed there. If they are, mentioning something to that effect on your CV might provide some help.