Recently police charged that a total of 5,500 government
employees, including 350 teachers, are suspected of having
received fictitious academic degrees from the Israeli branch
of the British University of Humberside. The revelations came
only a day after police said that dozens of teachers,
principals, psychologists, administrators and social workers
from the north of the country are suspected of having
knowingly purchased forged master's and doctoral degrees from
the Ion Creanga Pedagogical University in Moldova. According
to the police, the Moldova university denies it ever had any
Israeli students.
Although the charges have not yet been tested in court, the
police fraud squad arrested a 55-year-old resident of Haifa
on suspicion of forging the diplomas and other documents --
one of which said that he was a professor at the Moldovan
university.
According to Police Superintendent Herbie Primat, commander
of the Northern District Fraud Squad, several of those who
hold diplomas from Ion Creanga Pedagogical University
admitted to having paid from $2,000 to $10,000 for the
diplomas. The price they paid depended on the degree they
received and the subject they were supposed to have
studied.
There were some who claimed that they did the required work,
"but they were unable to say how they did it or where they
[did it]," said Supt. Primat.
The head of the Northern Region's fraud department also said
that in addition to the degrees bought from England, 50
employees in the Arab education sector bought degrees from
Ion Creanga Pedagogical University in Moldova, and 10 of them
are school principals.
These were only the recent scandals. In December 2001, the
secretary general of a teachers' union -- no less -- was
arrested on suspicion of fraudulently acquiring degrees from
the Israeli branches of the universities of Burlington and
Latvia. Fraud charges were filed against him last summer.
The interesting thing about all of these scandals is that
they only came to light when those involved in the fraud were
caught. If a university degree really means anything, one
would have expected that the performance in their jobs of
thousands of people who got their degrees by fraudulent means
would show that at least some of them lacked the education
that the degrees should have indicated. Perhaps a few people
can get away with it, but how could thousands of people do
their jobs well enough so that it was not evident that they
lacked the education?
The answer is that positions that just require some
university degree, or that provide extra pay for those with
such degrees, do not require any specific skill like
engineering or music. They require general intellectual
abilities, like the ability to read and analyze ideas and to
absorb and draw consequences from complex concepts.
As many universities around the world now recognize, many
people acquire these abilities by going about their daily
business in modern society. Thus, many institutions of higher
learning give mature people various levels of credit for
their "life experience."
Along these lines, a yeshiva education ranks among the most
advanced educational experiences that a person can have. The
combination of shiurim and chavrusas studying
gemora develops a person's analytic abilities to the
utmost. This is borne out in anecdotal evidence of yeshiva
students who go to work and perform at very high levels.
Of course, for us the main focus of learning is Torah
lishmoh and it needs no further justification. But there
is every reason to think that people who spent upwards of ten
hours a day studying gemora, a total of some 4,000
hours a year and about 16,000 hours in four years, are at
least as educated as those who spent about 2,000 hours in
classrooms and maybe (just maybe) the same amount in outside
work over four years studying comparative literature.
Moreover, a yeshiva education is far better in that it has
the declared goal of imparting ethics and morality and not
just value-free skills.
Certainly the best way to avoid such scandals as fraudulent
degrees in the future is to raise children to be moral
adults.
Although a yeshiva education is far from perfect in this
area, it is certainly superior in morality and no less
competent in any other area.
It should be recognized even by secular authorities as the
equivalent of a university-level degree.
