Technological advances have created many job opportunities, from Artificial Intelligence to analytics. It has also led to many challenges from the lack of skilled labour to high levels of unemployment.
So, we can assume that professionals can start a lucrative career by learning new skills. To learn new skills, one can choose from several training programs online and offline. However, as the market for skilled professionals grows, there has been a rise in fake universities and fake certifications.
A popular website talks about phoney universities that sell college diplomas and transcripts. Candidates can get a fake certificate including scanned and hard copies. Typically for a sum of $399-$2,000 for an undergraduate degree and up to $3,000 for a graduate degree.
The issue is not limited to a particular country. South Africa recently saw an actual social media advertisement selling fake degrees.
Pakistan saw officials of an IT company get arrested for providing counterfeit certificates. A few years ago, a Saudi council found out that 30,000+ fake engineering certificates were in use. Another report suggests that there are 3,300 unrecognized universities that are a part of a billion-dollar industry.
Also, 50,000 Ph.D.s are being bought from diploma mills every year, which are more than those received by legal means.
Adding to this is the issue of misrepresentation of credentials. Reports suggest that 50% of candidates manipulate them for a job application. This is a huge challenge for recruiters, who have to assess hundreds of applications for one position. Not only would they have to invest in cutting edge tools to detect counterfeiting, but would have to spend a lot of man-hours on background verification and more.
The sad part is that these diploma mills are luring unsuspecting rural students. As a result, they go off their career trajectories and the professional sector loses out on many talented candidates.
The solution for the fake certification plague
Blockchain-based digital certification
Blockchain technology brings in the much-needed transparency and traceability to the certification process. Blockchain’s distributed ledger system only allows a certificate to be duplicated and not altered. So, one can trust digital certificates based in blockchain to be authentic and tamper-proof.
Plus it does away with the need for any third-party involvement, making the issuing process super-transparent. Students who receive digital certificates can store them online. They can share them with recruiters easily and have it verified in a single click. If someone loses a certificate, the institutions can issue a duplicate one with just a few clicks.
Making all this possible is Certif-ID, a blockchain-powered platform.
Certif-ID in focus!
This platform is designed to bring together educational institutions, experts and recruiters. The institutions or training bodies after signing up to Certif-ID can issue digital certificates.
They can list the courses on the platform. Attract more students to sign up to the course. Manage batches efficiently and issue certificates directly into students’ digital profiles on the platform.
So, when a candidate receives a certification for a niche-skill, they can store it in their certification wallet on Certif-ID. The profile acts as a dashboard to showcase their skills to potential recruiters.
Of course, this would in turn help speed up the entire recruitment process. Recruiters no longer have to worry about fake certificates or time-consuming skill-verifications. All they have to do is view a candidate’s niche digital credentials, and voila! By scanning the QR code, they can assess all the details of a candidate including when and who issued the certificate.
Finally, it must be said that fake certificates pose an immense problem. Not just to students and the educational sector, but the professional sector too. Millions of dollars are spent tackling the issue, and millions more are lost by students.
This is where Certif-ID is making a difference. The goal here is to uplift the standards of education. Not only in a qualitative sense but also in terms of easing operations. After all, ease of operations can only lead to the betterment of the talent-supply pipeline.
If you are interested to know more, please schedule a demo with us. We would be delighted to give you in-depth insights into its potential.
