A number of instructors at a public university in Ho Chi Minh City have recently been detected using Ph.D. degrees granted by an American university which has not been recognized in the U.S.
Tuoi Tre correspondents found a list of those who have Ph.D. degrees from the science management department of Saigon University that included three people using degrees granted by California-based International American University. Two of them are lecturers N.T.L. and H.H.T., who received their Ph.D. degrees in 2010, and L.H.S., who got the degree in 2009.
The International American University is among a score of unaccredited U.S. universities and colleges which provide training programs in Vietnam, according to Dr. Mark A. Ashwill, the former country director of the Institute of International Education in the Southeast Asian nation.
In 2012, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) shut down the training programs of those schools and said that it would not recognize certificates conferred by them.
“Studying in that course was my personal demand and it was funded with my own money, not the state budget,” L.H.S., who enrolled in an online training program of the International American University, told Tuoi Tre.
“After learning that the school’s degree was not recognized in Vietnam, I found that in 2009 there was no detailed regulation on whether degrees from online Ph.D. programs were recognized in the country,” he added.