Fake Diplomas
Emphasis Must Shift From Academia to Meritocracy
The curtain was drawn on the first act of a fake diploma drama Friday with Dongguk University sacking the ``heroine’’ and requesting the prosecutor’s office to investigate the case. The disgraced heroine is Shin Jeong-ah, 35, an assistant art professor. It is quite regrettable that she has been on a lying spree since 2005 when she applied for the faculty position. The Seoul-based university’s fact-finding panel has concluded that she forged her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees when the school employed her.
What’s more surprising is that her lying and deceit did not stop there. She was also chosen as artistic director for the 2008 Gwangju Biennale, the country’s largest art festival, with the help of her fabricated academic credentials and career. She was even seen as a rising star in the art world. The Shin case is the biggest incident hitting the academic community since the data manipulation by a stem cell research team led by then Seoul National University professor Hwang Woo-suk last year.
Shin fled to the United States in an attempt to avoid accusations on her forgery scheme and has yet to admit it. She must have thrown away her scholastic conscience when she presented the university with fake diplomas _ undergraduate and master’s degrees from Kansas University and a PhD from Yale University. The biennial committee has already nullified their selection of her for the art directorship. It also filed a suit against her for causing damage to the festival.
Despite Dongguk University’s action against Shin, suspicions about her show little sign of dying down. The school said in a statement that there was no outside pressure or irregularities involving the recruitment of Shin as an assistant professor. ``We have not found any evidence proving outside pressure or kickbacks in return for employing her.’’ The university said former president Hong Ki-sam’s aggressive management style led to the scandal. It only admitted to the school’s administrative errors of not properly securing and verifying Shin’s diplomas.
The claims sound like an excuse for the school’s poor recruitment process. No excuses can be tolerated as the ball is now in the prosecution’s court. Prosecutors have to make a thorough investigation into the case to get to the bottom of Shin’s diploma forgery as well as mounting allegations about outside pressure and wrongdoings involving university administrators. Some senior professors and school officials claimed that they opposed Shin’s recruitment from the beginning due to suspicions about her qualifications and scholastic background. But they said the school ignored their opposition.
Dongguk University should set up a clear verification mechanism in order to prevent repetition of the Shin case. Other universities need to learn a lesson from the scandal as diploma forgeries are reported to be rampant in South Korea. We have to take a closer look at our portrait as a society, which puts too much emphasis on scholastic background. Revolutionary changes are required to place less emphasis on academic credentials and more on meritocracy. Only then can we succeed in rooting out diploma fabrication and plagiarism.