On 7TH August last year, former Newcastle University graduate Cici headed home from her shift at a busy city centre restaurant. Cici hopped on a bus and headed to the West end flat she shared with her boyfriend, Kevin. Cici having enjoyed a complimentary meal at her workplace, pulled on her jacket, and bid her colleagues farewell.
On 9th August 2008, Police received an emergency call from a distressed Chinese man. In his broken English one of the few distinguishable phases uttered was, “come soon, I think someone might be dead.”
Investigating officers called to the scene at Clayton Road found no signs of forced entry at the property. Upon entering the front bedroom of the ground floor flat, officers found a body lying face down on the bed. The victim was gagged and bound, with severe injuries to the head.
In the back bedroom police found the blood soaked dead body of a man with numerous wounds to his face and his throat cut. The bodies were identified as Zhen Xing Yang and Xi Zhou. The pair of Chinese nationals were also known as Kevin and Cici.
The ensuing police investigation into the brutal murders was monumental in its scale. Spanning as far as China, Detectives engaged every resource available in order to solve the case which stretched out over months.
Police eventually caught 31 year old Guang Hui Cao who was convicted of the Murders and sentenced to 33 years in jail.
Nortumbria Police’s Senior Investigating Officer, Detective superintendent Steve Wade, believes that to this day there was no clear motive for the crime. During the complex case however, some unusual details did surface about the victims.
Police discovered large sums of cash had passed through the couple’s bank accounts. Upon further investigation, information was gathered indicating Kevin’s involvement in the production and sale of bogus university qualifications. It emerged Kevin had himself used a forged certificate to enrol at Newcastle University.
As the case concluded, alarm bells began to ring with admissions officers. Newcastle University became understandably concerned that some students may have been admitted on courses they were not eligible for.
After carrying out checks in November 2008, 49 Chinese students were found to have provided false qualifications. The University believed that many of the students may have been unwitting victims of bogus “agents” in the UK and China who are often paid to submit applications and documents on the behalf of international students.
UK Naric monitors these overseas applications. Policy chief, Tim Buttress confirmed, “The problem is gathering momentum. More and more fake qualifications are coming through.”
According to D/Supt Wade, it is possible that up to 30% of Chinese students at UK universities may have submitted incorrect or fraudulent data. Fiscally speaking, it may be in the universities best interests that these indiscretions remain undiscovered.
Border and immigration minister, Phil Woolas said, “International students contribute £2.5 billion to the UK economy in tuition fees alone”. With 30% less Chinese students, UK universities could stand to loose around £800 thousand per year.
The expulsions at Newcastle are not the first of their kind. In June 2001 police investigated a suspected bogus-student immigration racket after Derby University discovered a number of Chinese students had submitted fake graduation certificate.
Mark Eberhardt, Derby’s international admissions officer, had been approached by a recruitment agent hoping to place Chinese students at the university. After receiving faxed copies of certificates, Eberhardt checked the qualifications with the institutions they were purportedly from. The qualifications were confirmed as fakes.
It is believed students and agents submit fraudulent documentation as a means to obtain a quick and relatively cheap route into the country.
Clive Saville, Chief executive of the UK council for overseas student affairs, said, “It is clear that in China there are people who try to establish student status in order to beat the immigration system.”
A 2004 investigation by The Times Higher, exposed agents who had arranged university places for “hundreds” of unqualified students at UK institutions including Oxford Brookes.
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service believe that regardless of the systems put in place to detect fraudulent applications, as many 480,000 could escape being verified. Many universities however, claim there is little more they can do to spot fraudulent applications
At the time, Barry Sheerma, chairman of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, promised to investigate the matter. He said, “It is essential that all entry to university is based on merit, not fraud.” Whether the investigation heralded any positive progress remains to be seen.
What is shocking is the notion that it would take two horrific murders and a global investigation for universities to take the issue seriously. Whether or not universities were aware of the problems in fraudulent admissions remains speculative. Hopefully, one outcome of the tragic case of Kevin and CiCi will be our UK institutions taking the initiative and putting procedures in place that mean only those who are genuinely entitled to places are admitted on courses.
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