The phenomenon of fraudulent reproduction of certificates has increased significantly in the past couple of years. In fact, a UNESCO study led by Dr. George Brown estimated that worldwide, 30% of senior executives present qualifications they do not hold.

Scott Thompson, former CEO of Yahoo is a good example. He was caught padding his resume with an embellished college degree. While he claimed he had a computer science degree, his college did not offer the computer science, major, until 4 years after Thomas had graduated.

This fine example shows just how diploma mills are becoming a major problem nowadays, even in large structures such as Yahoo. 

While this number may be alarming for universities that are at the edge of reputational risk, this also raises a serious concern for companies, especially in their hiring process.

In this article, we will be listing two different ways that educational institutions can adopt to secure their credentials and eliminate the threat of fake degrees.

1) Personalizing the certificate design and adding physical authentication features: 

To combat tampering of the credentials, educational institutions can add in certain features such as UV invisible ink, anti-scanning ink, etc. in order to prevent people from making a color replica. Therefore even if the degree is scanned, the copy would be far different than the original color.

One way to verify the certificate is by inspecting the design as well as the quality of the paper it was printed on. Genuine degrees are most likely to be printed using special paper. If it is printed on a normal paper, or that there are spelling mistakes there are high chances it could be a fake credential.

2) Securing Credentials on the Blockchain 

While combining physical anti-counterfeiting features makes it harder for people to attempt faking certificates, this doesn’t make your credentials 100% tamper-proof, as more and more people are finding ways around these security measures; not to mention just how much time-consuming it could get to create, print, mail and then managing support requests for your paper certificates.

This leads us to our second method which consists of implementing a blockchain-powered solution to the institution’s credential management process, for a faster, seamless, and more convenient authentication.

 But first, what is a blockchain credential?

Blockchain credentials are the digital equivalent of paper-based credentials issued by a specific institution. Once these credentials are stored on the blockchain, the data within these certificates cannot be altered or modified, enabling institutions to prevent fraud-related cases.

Blockchain-powered credentials do not only help you secure your certificates from tampering, but they also have the added benefit of empowering students to share their stories and lifelong achievements with their potential employers without a need for the HR team to perform a credential check providing more credibility to the skills a student acquires. They can be given as evidence that a student who attended a specific course is knowledgeable of certain skills. 

In order to combat the problem with diploma mills efficiently, we developed Scribe: a solution that helps you create, issue, and securely manage your digital certificates while saving an incredible amount of time and resources on your next digital transformation. 

Our tool will help you maximize speed & efficiency while keeping your costs low. Scribe also helps you keep track of your key engagement metrics like who viewed your certificates and their respective industry giving you more insight into your program’s marketing reach and enhancing your brand exposure.

Digital transformations may sound overwhelming at first, but it doesn’t have to be with some guidance from our experts. we’re here for you.

Become a Part of Scribe’s Journey

Taking this opportunity, we would like to invite you into our discord community. By engaging with our community, you can closely follow the development of the Scribe solution while assisting us in researching and developing new modules to improve the solution. This community will operate as a forum for discussion on pressing EdTech related matters. By engaging with the community, you will get an opportunity to interact with the students from different universities worldwide and get a chance to support, challenge and inspire one another. This community will also serve as a platform for networking, mentoring and career development.

More information about Scribe can be found on our website.