INYT special report: Fake degrees earn company millions

Pakistan-based firm used network of made-up schools in global scheme

Seen from the Internet, it is a vast education empire: hundreds of universities and high schools, with elegant names and smiling professors at sun-dappled American campuses. Their websites, glossy and assured, offer online degrees in dozens of disciplines, like nursing and civil engineering.

There are glowing endorsements on the CNN iReport website, enthusiastic video testi­monials, and State Depart­ment authentication certificates bearing the signature of Secretary of State John Kerry. ‘‘We host one of the most renowned faculty in the world,’’ boasts a woman introduced in one promotional video as the head of a law school. ‘‘Come be a part of Newford University to soar the sky of excellence.’’ Yet on closer examination, this picture shimmers like a mirage. The news reports are fabricated. The professors are paid actors. The university campuses exist only as stock photos on computer servers. The degrees have no true accreditation.

In fact, very little in this virtual academic realm, appearing to span at least 370 websites, is real — except for the tens of millions of dollars in estimated revenue it gleans each year from many thousands of people around the world, all paid to a secretive Pakistani software company.

That company, Axact, operates from the port city of Karachi, where it employs over 2,000 people and calls itself Pakistan’s largest software exporter.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19^th, 2015.