‘Shady’ agreement: Education dept’s offer of 30,000 UK degrees too good to be true

British High Commission, education secretary unaware of new agreement announced by minister.

KARACHI:

The Sindh education department's alleged agreement with the United Kingdom to offer around "30,000 prestigious British Bachelor's degrees without students having to travel to the Britain" appears to be a scam, The Express Tribune has learned.

A press statement by education minister Nisar Khuhro, which was released to the media on Wednesday, claimed that "the department has, despite strong opposition from other countries, won a provisional five-year contract with the UK."

Dr Fazlullah Pechuho, the additional chief secretary of the Sindh education department appears, however, to be on a different page. "The Sindh education department has not made any such agreement with the UK," he said.

"The education minister is not authorised to sign an agreement under the rules of business that give this authority to the education department's secretary," Dr Pechuho told The Express Tribune. "I have not signed the alleged agreement."

Dr Pechuho said that even if somebody has signed such an agreement he cannot endorse it. "We have our own Higher Education Commission-prescribed rules for awarding degrees as well as accreditation to foreign degree-awarding institutions," he explained. "How can we offer UK's degrees just like that?"

The secretary felt the minister must explain what happened but Khuhro failed to respond to any calls or text messages. His spokesperson, Shakeel Memon, failed to answer who the contracting party was and which British university will be giving these Bachelor's degrees to the students in Sindh.

UK High Commission unaware

What had made the education minister's announcement even murkier was the British High Commission's unawareness of this agreement. Khuhro's official press statement had claimed that the contract was an agreement between the "Sindh education and literacy department and the United Kingdom".

Jonathan Williams, the press attaché and deputy head of communications at the British High Commission in Islamabad, stated that neither the British government nor the UK Trade and Investment, which is a government department that works with businesses based in the UK, had anything to do with this agreement.

"Nobody in our High Commission is aware of this contract," Williams told The Express Tribune. "Universities, not only in Britain but across the world, do make agreements with foreign governments but there obviously are laws that govern such agreements."

He added that the student scholarships offered by the UK government were given through the British High Commission but the UK entity mentioned in Khuhro's statement, Higher Learning Partnerships, is a non-government organisation.

Credible or not?

This Newcastle-based organisation is running a single-page website for student registration, www.sindh.org.uk, which is being operated through the UK and was mentioned in the education minister's press release. It stated that Higher Learning Partnerships in collaboration with the Sindh education and literacy department proposes to introduce United Kingdom Bachelors' degrees commencing July 2015.

The organisation is a private limited company, registered in the UK on May 17, 2013, under registration No 08533906. The organisation, under the directorship of 53-year-old Philip Morris, has declared its Standard Industrial Classification of Economic Activities codes as 85421 (first-degree level higher education) and 85422 (post-graduate level higher education) for operations in the UK. But neither does it possess a website on its name, nor does it hold any record of achievements to its credit.

Against this backdrop, the Sindh education minister has asked potential students, aged between 17 and 30 years, to register via the website before October 14. 'Sindhi students' will not need to go to the UK but the learning and examinations will take place in Pakistan, the minister has claimed. The cost for the three-year course will be approximately Rs850,000 and 20% of the courses will be further subsidised through an endowment fund that, according to the minister's statement, the UK has agreed to set up. According to Khuhro, the admission seats are limited to 6,000 placements per year.

"At present, only 3,000 Pakistanis are able to attend UK universities every year and this number is decreasing because of visa and other issues," said the minister's statement. For those who can obtain a UK visa, the total cost of education can be up to Rs16 million. "To obtain exactly the same Bachelor's degree for only Rs850,000 while students can continue to attend to their responsibilities at home is a massive step forward for Sindh," it added.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2014.