Bogus PhD holders at education summit
Dr Collin AbrahamPublished: Mar 9, 2009 7:31 AM | Updated: Mar 9, 2009 7:33 AM
Please allow me to congratulate the organisers of the 13th Malaysian Education Summit 2009 to be held between March 17 and 18 for selecting as its theme ‘Building a World-Class Malaysian Education System: Challenges and Opportunities in a Global World’.
This is indeed a unique opportunity for Malaysians to take up the challenging and visionary educational scenarios that will be demanded by the extremely complex societal situations in the local and international communities both now and in the future.
For instance one session will focus on ‘Education for Creativity and Innovation: How Can Thinking Individuals be Developed within the Knowledge Economy?’
It is clear that to achieve these laudable goals of the summit, we will need to have participants with the highest possible qualifications and experiences to make such a contribution.
While it is well-known and accepted that these requirements are not necessarily confined to academic qualifications and professional experiences, at the same time it is important to emphasise that such criteria are absolutely essential in terms of the legitimacy of the knowledge base of the participants.
With the greatest of respect it needs to be pointed out that many of the ‘role players’ at the summit from the local universities do not hold doctorate degrees.
What they do have are almost all the government titles one could think of, so that it would seem that these titles are equivalent to doctorate degrees!
Indeed, it would appear that one participant (and there may be others) who used the title ‘Dr’ without brackets thereby ‘passing off’ as the holder of an earned doctorate, when, in fact, he was only conferred with an honourary doctorate.
This might have been an omission on the part of the person concerned but it is hoped that the organisers will take immediate steps to rectify this situation and to ensure it does not happen again.
This is indeed a unique opportunity for Malaysians to take up the challenging and visionary educational scenarios that will be demanded by the extremely complex societal situations in the local and international communities both now and in the future.
For instance one session will focus on ‘Education for Creativity and Innovation: How Can Thinking Individuals be Developed within the Knowledge Economy?’
It is clear that to achieve these laudable goals of the summit, we will need to have participants with the highest possible qualifications and experiences to make such a contribution.
While it is well-known and accepted that these requirements are not necessarily confined to academic qualifications and professional experiences, at the same time it is important to emphasise that such criteria are absolutely essential in terms of the legitimacy of the knowledge base of the participants.
With the greatest of respect it needs to be pointed out that many of the ‘role players’ at the summit from the local universities do not hold doctorate degrees.
What they do have are almost all the government titles one could think of, so that it would seem that these titles are equivalent to doctorate degrees!
Indeed, it would appear that one participant (and there may be others) who used the title ‘Dr’ without brackets thereby ‘passing off’ as the holder of an earned doctorate, when, in fact, he was only conferred with an honourary doctorate.
This might have been an omission on the part of the person concerned but it is hoped that the organisers will take immediate steps to rectify this situation and to ensure it does not happen again.
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