Trade in fake papers soars

Students from China and other Asian countries are using fake English-language certificates to try to enrol in overseas universities.

Forged English competency certificates have allegedly been issued through the British Council's International English Language Testing System (IELTS). The forgeries are said to be available on the black market for up to A$10,000 (£4,170).

IELTS officials are working with police fraud squads to track down bogus migration agents who supply the fake language certificates. The testing system is owned and operated by the British Council with partners Cambridge University, IDP Education and IELTS Australia.

Officials from the Australian Immigration Department in Beijing said that English-speaking qiangshou , or "hired guns", charged high fees to sit the English tests on behalf of students who wanted Australian visas. The Beijing office identified 1,550 cases of student visa applicants using phoney documents in 2003.

An IELTS spokeswoman in Sydney said cheating and fraud were so common worldwide that staff running tests were being trained to detect impostors.

In future, students applying to sit the tests will be issued with photo ID, which they will have to bring with them when they sit the test to prove they are not a qiangshou .

David Ingram, a former IELTS chief examiner for Australia, accused some universities of "sacrificing quality for money" in the way the test was being used.

Professor Ingram, executive dean of the School of Applied Language Studies at Melbourne University Private, said: "They show little regard for the welfare of international students and the long-term negative impact such scant regard for quality will have on their ability to attract students and consequently on their revenue."

International students were too often accepted without a proper assessment of their English-language skills or with a proficiency too low to enable them to cope, he said. He added that staff then pushed students through without regard to their performance.

The IELTS spokeswoman supported his comments, saying that even some foreign students with genuine certificates did not speak English well enough to cope with university. More than half of Australia's universities had set the language score for entry too low.

The IELTS recommends a score of 6.5 for undergraduate entry, but 24 out of 40 Australian universities have set the score at 6. Many academics believe this is inadequate for university study.

The IELTS spokeswoman said students whose language problems made it difficult for them to succeed in their studies would spread the word at home, putting Australia's reputation at risk.

China is also cracking down on fraud in its admissions system. Competition for a university place in China is more intense than in Australia and admissions staff at some universities have been accused of selling places to students who did not achieve the required marks.

Others are said to have withheld admission letters for successful candidates until they paid thousands of yuan in bribes.

The Chinese education ministry has launched a website setting out admissions guidelines as part of the clean-up campaign.

Some 900 universities out of more than 2,000 across China have posted their policies on the site. These provide information on selection criteria, timetables for admission procedures, fees payable and quotas of students for certain subjects and regions.

Students are encouraged to report irregularities. Last October, The Times Higher uncovered evidence of a flourishing market in places at British universities for Chinese students.