Fake Universities and Deception in Higher Education: When Will Hamed Al-Hajri Step Down?!
Published on February 20, 2019
Ali Mansouri Writer, Researcher, Consultant Page 1 of 12
Introduction A few days ago, there was great anger in India as a number of Indian students were arrested in the USA because they were deceived to join a fake university. Of course, these students are victims, not criminals and should be treated as such; though the law, as they brutally say, does not protect “the idiots”! “India has made a diplomatic protest to the US after 129 Indian students were arrested for enrolling in a fake university. The University of Farmington, advertised as based in Michigan state, was run by undercover agents from the Department of Homeland Security to expose “pay-to-stay” immigration fraud. Prosecutors say those who enrolled knew that the facility would be illegal. However, Indian officials say the students may have been duped. On Saturday, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued the protest to the US embassy in Delhi, expressing concern over the arrests and demanding consular access to those detained.” (BBC.com. Sunday, 3 February 2019) “The university posed as a legitimate place for foreign students, many of them trying to earn master’s degrees. More than 600 students enrolled in what federal prosecutors call a “pay to stay” scheme. The students’ arrests on civil immigration charges have sparked civil rights concerns from advocates who say the U.S. government tricked unsuspecting people. They say it's legitimate for foreign students to enroll in university programs that allow them to work, which is what the students at the University of Farmington were doing.” (Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press, 4 February 2019). This is understandable but very unacceptable. Students should not be deceived for any reason. They are one of the most important human assets in every country and they are the future leaders of the world. In addition to being illegal, the deception of students is grossly immoral: we do not want our students to be brought up as “cheater” instead of “leaders”. On India Today Web Desk, New Delhi (April 25, 2018) we are told that the Indian University Grants Commission (UGC) published a list of 24 fake universities. The UGC has warned students and the public not to enroll in these 24 ‘self-styled’ fake universities. As per the official notice, 'Students and the public at large are hereby informed that such 24 self-styled, unrecognized institutions functioning in contravention of the UGC Act have been declared as fake and not entitled to confer any degrees. The detailed list is at UGC website, ugc.ac.in. “
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Ministries of Higher Education in many countries issue directives to their nationals to warn them of fake and unrecognized higher education institutions outside of the country.
Deception Practices Higher education is a lucrative business all over the globe. But, as with any business, there are rogue senior managers, Boards of Directors, and Boards of Trustees who have no moral values or work ethics. All they are after is making huge profits at the expense of our students and their families. This is why we need to stand up and expose these wicked, dishonest, and selfish managers. What has happened to some Indian students in the US is clear and understandable though unacceptable. What is not so clear to most students and the public, in general, is when a university or a higher education institution practices deception on a large-scale by publishing and posting information, videos, documents, and programs of academic study that are completely fake and have nothing to do with reality. This is what Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC) and Hamed Al-Hajri (current Assistant VC for Administration and Finance) at A’Sharqiyah University in Oman have been doing for many years. Anyone who has even a brief work or study experience at A’Sharqiyah University would tell you. This cannot be left to continue forever.
Fake Pictures and Videos Let us start with the “campus pictures” Hamed Al-Hajri has posted everywhere including the Internet. These are fake pictures. They do not represent A’Sharqiyah University campus nor do they represent places related to the University in any way. Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC) should be ashamed of himself for posting a fake video of A’Sharqiyah University on his Facebook page. This video has been on his page for a long time. The video starts with showing a suspension bridge across a sea leading to A’Sharqiyah University. This is a fake video. There is no suspension bridge in the whole area and there is no sea in the small town of Ibra where A’Sharqiyah University is located. The University has been built in the middle of nowhere in the desert! The video contains information which never reflects what is really going on in the labs or in the classrooms. Students are taught through very traditional methods of teaching where they sit like parrots watching a presentation of the teaching material even in science and practical lectures and are then given handouts to memorize and recite for the tests, quizzes, and exams! There is no modern university teaching, no critical thinking, no creativity, no innovation—nothing worthy of the term “university teaching” at all! Even if this video may be deleted from Abood Al-Sawafi’s Facebook page, you may still find it on YouTube. I have downloaded it and can send it to anyone who is interested in knowing the truth. Another video says, “A’Sharqiyah University is the biggest university in A’Sharqiyah region”! This is completely false. A’Sharqiyah University is the only university in A’Sharqiyah region and Page 3 of 12
it is smaller than a secondary school by international standards and norms; it is just a big mouse: “A small elephant is bigger than a big mouse.”! Go to YouTube now. You will find another fake video about A’Sharqiyah University and its campus. It is very modern, well-designed and very beautiful. It contains buildings, classrooms, and offices which are very attractive and indicate a highly-appealing campus. But in fact, this is a fake video and in no way does it represent the actual campus. The real campus is more like a Bedouin camp. It consists of isolated, unconnected, and awkward offices. When the new teachers are recruited to work at the University, they are sent the YouTube video to attract them to come to join the university but when they do join the University, they are allocated very dirty and cramped Porta Cabins as offices. These Porta Cabins are full of insects, swaps, rats, snakes, and scorpions! This is particularly true about the Foundation Program. This is deliberately done by the puppet HR Director at the orders of Abood Al-Sawafi, the former VC, and Hamad Al-Hajri, the current Assistant VC for Administration and Finance! Is there cheating and deception like that anywhere in the world?!
Medium of Instruction In all documents and websites, A’Sharqiyah University says that “English is the medium of instruction at the University.” according to the University’s charter, laws, and bylaws. It is also the official requirement of the Ministry of Higher Education in Oman as per the Ministerial Decision (78/2009) issued by the Ministry of Higher Education to officially permit A’Sharqiyah University to operate as a higher education provide using English as the medium of instruction. But Hamed Al-Hajri, being in control of everything at the University, has disregarded this official obligation and turned it upside down. He has made Arabic the language of instruction. Just go to A’Sharqiyah University website, A’Sharqiyah Facebook page, and other pages on the Internet, you will be bombarded with information and notices telling you about the courses being taught in Arabic at the University: B.A. in Education, B.A. in Arts, B.A. in Archives and Documentation, B.A. in Management, Diploma in Management, B.A. in Educational Counseling, B.A.in Business Studies, and even M.A. in Business Administration (MBA). So how does the University claim that “English is the medium of instruction”?! Anybody who has the simplest idea about employment opportunities in Oman and in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries would realize this dangerous trend of deception and cheating being practiced by Hamed Al-Hajri and A’Sharqiyah University. If university graduates in Oman and the GCC do not possess a good command of English, then their chances of getting employment in the private sector are almost zero. Companies go around the colleges and universities in Oman to interview senior students for employment opportunities with them. The first thing they look for is the students’ level of English and whether their program of study is taught in English. If the students’ command of English is very weak or their degrees and certificates are not in English, companies will never recruit them. This is because most of the companies and corporations working in Oman and the GCC countries are Page 4 of 12
multinationals and they deal with global customers who mostly use English for communication. This tells us what a bleak future awaiting A’Sharqiyah University students after graduation. They are being deceived and cheated by Hamed Al-Hajri and by all the decision-makers who are in charge of the academic programs at the University. Simply put, there are many linguistic varieties of the Arabic language nowadays: old classical Arabic, modern classical Arabic, colloquial Arabic, and many restricted dialects of Arabic used by different social and cultural communities. Modern classical Arabic is the variety of the language that, throughout the Arab world from Iraq to Morocco and beyond, is found in the prose of books, newspapers, magazines, etc. and is used for formal communication, formal education and formal public address. This is the variety which is supposed to have been mastered by Arabic-native students in schools before joining any higher education university. But because of the very low level of linguistic and academic standard of students admitted to A’Sharqiyah University, these students cannot even communicate properly in Arabic; they do not know how to spell it! Imagine university students who do not know the spelling system of their native language even after twelve years of formal study in schools. So how could such students engage in higher education study programs and how are they admitted to A’Sharqiyah University? This is because Hamed Al-Hajri does not care about robust study programs or quality education. All he cares about is making profits to please the investors and keep his job. He boasts of organizing training sessions for these students to teach them spelling in Arabic! You find information and pictures posted on A’Sharqiyah websites and Internet pages telling us about this great achievement! He even gives money and awards to some local journalists who write lengthy flattering articles about it on their newspapers! Is this not a disaster in higher education? Of course, there is nothing wrong with using Arabic for teaching some subsidiary courses. But to assert that English is the medium of instruction in all documents and websites, and you are officially required to do that, and then you do not respect this assertion by using Arabic is really illegal and dishonest. It is a gross violation of the University’s charter and work-ethics. Offering students worthless degrees and certificates with zero-employability cannot be described other than a serious sort of academic deception and cheating. It is no surprise that the vast majority of the male graduates of A’Sharqiyah University work now as taxi drivers and the female graduates as housewives! The rosy future A’Sharqiyah University has promised them in joining its academic programs has always been a big, nasty lie.
Fake Study Programs In order to illustrate how fake the academic programs are at A’Sharqiyah University, we will take the B.Sc. in Engineering program as an example. This program, in any decent and respected university, will focus on the academic courses needed by engineers with extensive field work to give the students the confidence and pre-job practical experience. But you will be shocked to find out that at A’Sharqiyah University engineering college students spend most of their time in Page 5 of 12
studying courses that have nothing to do with engineering: Arabic Language, Pre-Islamic Literature, Omani Civilization, Omani Culture, Islamic Studies, Philosophy, Psychology, and other similar courses. All of these courses are taught in Arabic and many of them should have been mastered by the students during their school years before joining the university. So where are the engineering courses? They deal mostly with Math: Math 1, Math 2, Math 3, Math 4, etc. What a garbage program?! This is why you find only a few students registering or staying with the College of Engineering at A’Sharqiyah University. Just go and count them! You find a similar picture with almost all the study programs of the University. Where is the Ministry of Higher Education?! What are they doing?! In many of A’Sharqiyah University’s documents, we find mentions of “cooperation with Oklahoma State University and Texas Technological University in the U.S.A in designing its academic programs and their implementation according to the best international standards to allow the University to provide a high-quality education.” This is completely false. It is fake information. Oklahoma State University and Texas Technological University in the U.S. have nothing to do with the garbage programs being offered by A’Sharqiyah University! University Academic programs are to run as per robust academic plans approved by the Ministry of Higher Education. They must not be arbitrarily changed for the sake of reducing cost. The credit-hour system should also be respected and maintained. It must not be changed into an annual system in a chaotic way as Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri have done. They have increased the credit hours for each course to four instead of three just to reduce the number of teachers and courses and thus reduce costs. A’Sharqiyah University is the only higher education institution which follows this arbitrary four-hour credit system that puts the student at a very serious disadvantage compared with the graduates of other universities in Oman. Their level of achievement will certainly be far below the national standards. This is unsustainable in the long run and will very negatively affect the academic reputation of A’Sharqiyah University. But Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri do not really care about the reputation of the University; they care only about money.
Foundation Program There has been a binding agreement between the Ministry of Higher Education in Oman and the University of A’Sharqiyah as a higher education provider. The agreement was signed between the two parties about nine years ago. As per this agreement, all the textbooks and other teaching and learning materials (e.g. workbooks) to be used by the teachers and students in the Foundation Program must be new and original. The costs of these textbooks and materials are included within the tuition fees and are paid in full by the Ministry for each and every student sponsored by the Ministry as per the system of “internal scholarships” according to which most of the Page 6 of 12
Omani school-leavers are admitted to higher education institutions in Oman. This means that these textbooks belong legally to the students sponsored by the Ministry and they have the legal rights to keep them after their study in the Foundation Program has finished. The same applies to self-sponsored students. But Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri have been refusing to buy new textbooks and they insist on retrieving the used books from the students. What is worse than the worse is the “fines� imposed by Hamad Al-Hajri on the students if they do not return the books to the University or they lose them for any reason. The fines are threefold of the original cost of the book. So if the book costs US$20, the fine will be US$60! Many students have found these fines very unfair and repulsive but no one would listen to them. The students are fined for books they own legally as per the agreement with the Ministry of Higher Education. What sort of thievery and deception is this, Mr. Hamed Al-Hajri?! What Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri have been doing regarding the Foundation Program books and fines means the University owes the old students the costs of these books and they are legally obligated to return the money to the Ministry or to the students since the University has been charging for new books but has not been buying any. Instead, they illegally retrieve the books from the students and re-use them in a primitive and vulgar way. What is really sad and disturbing is the current situation of the General-Foundation Program (GFP) at the University. This Program was one of the most successful programs at the University and in the country. It was originally designed as per the International standards and benchmarks of the Foundation Programs. It used to consist of four components: English Component, Mathematics Component, Computing and IT Component with the General and Academic Study Skills component taught in specific courses and also built in the other three components. All components follow the criteria and standards of higher education as stipulated by the Ministry of Higher education and other education and accreditation authorities. All the teaching materials (textbooks, Workbooks, CDs, etc.) were carefully selected to help achieve the goals of the Foundation Program and meet the students’ general and academic needs. These materials are published by some of the best international publishers who take education very seriously and put it before profit such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Longman. They are beautifully designed and written according to rigorous academic standards and the needs of international students. There are eight textbooks for each level and a lot of interactive exercises for learning and reinforcing English language skills, vocabulary and structures in life-like contexts and situations. There is a textbook for each language skill and component: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Grammar and Study Skill. There is also an Integrative Textbook to combine and summarize the skills and components in a very effective way so that there will be language and academic compensation among the skills and components so that if there is a shortage of exposure or teaching happened, for various reasons, the other textbooks and teachers would compensate for the shortage. The Program worked very well, the students were very happy, the results were excellent, and the reputation of the University was greatly enhanced. Then came Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri and destroyed the Page 7 of 12
Foundation program to fill their pockets with illegitimate money at the expense of our students and their future. Instead of teaching the language skills using very relevant and attractively designed books for each skill, Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri have decided to use only one book. They replaced the Foundation Program Syllabus approved by the Oman Ministry of Higher Education by a very weak syllabus lower than that of an intermediate school; just to reduce costs as they mistakenly believe. The Program was of very high quality and was effective in helping students attain the prescribed student learning outcomes in at least four areas of learning: English, Mathematics, Computing and IT, and General and Academic Study Skills. It was a very popular program among students and their parents and the University gained a very good academic reputation for it. Students used to refuse to move to other colleges and universities without completing the Foundation Program at the University. All the international requirements and benchmarks have been canceled now. The benchmarks are now “absolute zero”: no TOEFL, no IELTS, no Cambridge Certificate, no ICDL, no IC3 – nothing at all! What is the worth of a program or a degree without any international benchmarks?
Pirated Teaching Handouts University teaching is normally based on sound theories and principles of education. Books, references and other sources of genuine and original knowledge are used in teaching and research and are made available for teachers and students. This is the case in respected higher education institutions all over the world. This was also the case at A’Sharqiyah University before Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC) and Hamed Al-Hajri (current Assistant VC) came to take up the highest management jobs in the administration of the University. They canceled the use of books and references for teaching in all college programs and gave awkward instructions to the teachers to use “handouts” instead of books and references. These are tiny handouts made up of a few pages that students are asked to have them photocopied from the original books and references. The students are compelled to pay for all the photocopied materials used in teaching and assignments. These tiny handouts represent an awkward and outdated style of teaching that does not fit the modern academic requirements. They are also illegal as per the International Copyright Laws. They are photocopied without any legal permission from their original writers or publishers. Teaching at A’Sharqiyah university has been reduced to dull lectures and boring presentations. There are no tutorials or discussion sessions or even question-answer activities. Students just learn by heart the contents of the handouts and sit for written exams. The answers they write are just memorized information from the handouts. The student academic life has been reduced to a Page 8 of 12
worthless process of quizzes, tests, and exams which are mostly of a very low level—oftentimes lower than a high school! Is this really a university teaching?! When you go to any respectable university in the world, the lecturer would give you for each course a list of Readings, another list for Recommended Readings, and the third list for Further Readings. This is the minimum. You go to A’Sharqiyah university, you find unqualified, uneducated and vulgar senior management asking you to make up your “handouts” for the students or specify the chapters for the students to photocopy at their expense. The students never see or touch a book in their four or five years of academic study. It is really very shameful and dishonest when you read what Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri claim in the University’s vision and mission that the University aspires to “Creating an educated society which is characterized by academic excellence, thinking originality, practical implementation of knowledge and civilized behavior. The University aims, in [at] the same time, at the continuous development of academic programs and activities to assure the sustainability of excellence that enables it to compete.” How do they want to achieve “academic excellence, thinking originality, practical implementation of knowledge and civilized behavior.”?! Through illegal tiny handout, dull and boring lectures and presentations, and fake university exams?! Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri do not care about what is honest and what is dishonest, what is legal and what is illegal. Whenever I used to draw their attention to the necessity of getting permission and approval for any serious academic changes from the Ministry of Higher Education or the appropriate educational or government authorities, they used to laugh and point to their pockets meaning the Ministry and the Government are there in their pockets! Never have I seen before such reckless and rogue senior managers in any company or a higher education institution. It is no surprise then that too many students drop out of their academic study. They go raising cattle and camels on the farms that are widely spread in the A’Sharqiyah region or join the police and the army. But the Ministry of Higher education continues to pay tuition fees for the students even after they have dropped out! What a disaster!
A University for Sale It is really degrading and shameful to turn A’Sharqiyah University into a sort of a commercial institute to teach kids from all the primary schools in A’Sharqiyah region for little money from the kids and their families. This is what Hamed Al-Hajri has been doing since he joined the University. You find primary school kids every day at the University and everywhere. You find notices everywhere in A’Sharqiyah region and on the Internet inviting students to come and study their school subjects at the University! Is this really the job of a university?
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One day, we were shocked to find out that our students were unable to take their regular lessons, lectures, and practicals in the IT labs for more than two weeks because of Hamed Al-Hajri’s reckless and irresponsible behavior. He leased these IT labs to groups from outside of the University for money that has gone directly into his pocket. This was an illegal action done without permission from the then Vice-Chancellor or from the Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program, who was in charge of the students’ schedules in the language labs. Hamed Al-Hajri is prepared to sell the whole University for a “fistful of dollars”!
Rotten System The Ministry of Higher Education annually allocates a “quota” (a number) of students to each higher education institution in the country. This covers government and private institutions including all colleges and universities. Regrettably, this does not depend on established national or international criteria such as the level of academic performance of the institution, its capacity, the facilities available, the quality of its graduate and other well-known criteria for the admission of students in higher education. It mostly depends upon the “personal relationships” of the owners of the institution and its senior managers with the people in charge of the allocation of students in the Ministry. It also depends on the political power and influence of these people in the country. The more powerful and influential they are; the more students the Ministry allocates to their institutions every year. This has contributed a great deal to the deterioration of academic standards of the graduates in most institutions. Whether there is a high level of cheating, deception, fraud, and forgery in the institution or not, the institution gets its annual quota of students regardless of anything. This is a rotten system and needs to be drastically reversed if we really care about higher education and the future of the students and the country. You may imagine a start-up higher education institution like A’Sharqiyah where the owners and the senior managers do not care about the basics of higher education; nor are they held accountable for anything because of this rotten system. They do not care about whether or not their university is up to the standards, or even the minimal standards, as long as they can survive and a good number of students are annually allocated to them. It is not surprising then that they rely on disinformation, fabricated documents, and fake data, especially on the Internet, to deceive everybody.
His Majesty’s Warning Oman has been blessed with a great leader. His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos, is a man of peace and a strong advocate and supporter of education and higher education. This has made it possible for Oman to be one of the most peaceful countries in the Middle East and the world and to be able to invest good amounts of money on education. I have already written three articles about His Majesty’s efforts and philosophy of peace and education. I would like to reiterate a few points from one of these articles to support the main arguments here.
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His Majesty warned against fake degrees on various occasions; in particular, during his visit to the first university in the Sultanate in 2000. (See the original article: “On the Occasion of Oman Renaissance Day: Sultan Qaboos of Oman on Higher Education” published on LinkedIn on July 23, 2016.
“We do not want people with degrees to “show off” and we never accept “fake” degrees and certificates. We know there are even “fake” Ph.D. degrees in the world. We should be careful and on alert all the time.” “From the very beginning, we have been focusing on the “quality of education” not quantity. We strongly believe that degrees and certificates are only pieces of paper if they are not backed up with genuine knowledge and deep academic background.” “Academic Programs are to be robust programs following international benchmarks and standards. There should be strict procedures to ensure the quality of these programs in reality not only on paper or fake documents.” “We should not repeat things like “parrots”. To confiscate the freedom of thought and speech is a great sin regardless of whoever practices it.”
Conclusions With the recognition that financial and human resources are always limited, there needs to be a comprehensive revision of the existing colleges and universities to determine which of these colleges and universities are to continue in operation and which need to be closed down if they are not academically, economically and socially viable and sustainable. As the Ministry of Higher Education takes decisions, from time to time, prohibiting Omani students from studying in some higher education institutions outside Oman in order to avoid fake institutions and maintain quality education, the same should apply to the institutions inside the Sultanate. It is unreasonable, uneconomical, and immoral that a higher education provider like A’Sharqiyah University is allowed to operate and receive millions and millions of rials in a grant from the Ministry every year but it practices disinformation and deception on a large-scale and does not qualify to be a university in any sense of the word. Fake information is like drops of poison. We need to raise our students’ awareness of any disinformation from any educational company or a higher education institution. There is nothing better than being honest whether in life or in business. Higher education is one of the most important public priorities for any modern-day nation. It is regarded as the guardian of national culture and the main factor in economic growth and an indispensable engine for the realization of the public and individual aspirations. It cannot be left for a greedy, incompetent, and vulgar Assistant VC like Hamed Al-Hajri to make arbitrary Page 11 of 12
decisions and messy plans for the sole purpose of making profits at the expense of the future of our students. At present, there are more than 54 higher education institutions in Oman providing thousands of students with higher education in different specializations. None of them behaves like A’Sharqiyah University in this shameful way of disinforming students and offering them fake foundation and study programs. Our students certainly deserve better than this. There have been great achievements in the higher education sector in Oman during the last four decades or so due to the great support and attention paid to this sector by His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos of Oman, and the Government of Oman. But A’Sharqiyah University under the management of Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri has been a vulgar exception to this general trend. Hamed Al-Hajri is a sick person. His reckless obsession with money has blinded him completely. In all his meetings, discussions and actions, the only thing which matters to him is money, money, and more money. I really wonder about the true state of his mind as he behaves in a very bizarre way. When you talk to him, you feel he is a very ignorant, uncivilized, and superficial person. He does not have even the slightest knowledge about academic programs or academic issues. This is because he has spent his life raising chickens, cattle, sheep, and camels on his farm in the middle of the A’Sharqiyah desert! He wants the teachers and other employees of the University to obey him like the animals he owns on his farm, without giving them even the smallest space for making any suggestions or expressing opinions that may differ from his own. I am really surprised to find Hamed Al-Hajri, the Assistant VC of A’Sharqiyah University, behaves in a very irresponsible and non-academic manner and does exactly the opposite to what His Majesty says; just to make illegal profits at the expense of the students and quality education. He mistakenly believes that the more money he makes in this crooked and illegitimate way, the more successful the university is. This is utter nonsense and moral bankruptcy. Universities can make sustainable profits only through a good academic reputation and a recognizable record of teaching and research; not through deception, fake degrees and forgery. There is something very wrong with the mentality of this stupid, incompetent and corrupt person. Hamed Al-Hajri is morally bankrupt. He has been inflicting heavy damages on A’Sharqiyah University for too long. There is nothing to wait for. He must step down or be sacked. There is no alternative.
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