We've all faked it.
Whether once or twice or a few dozen times — be it through forced smiles or forged signatures, replicated art pieces or plagiarised papers, fake IDs or fake orgasms — we have all faked our way through social occasions, conversations, professional ladders and — if one can bring an honest admission of ribaldry here — sexual situations, where faking it is a lot more helpful than making it.
And, if anyone tells you they have never faked anything in the pure journey that is their saintly life, they're lying through their teeth.
Faking a degree is altogether different business.
Recently, in Pakistan, a detailed report written by The New York Times Pakistan Bureau Chief Declan Walsh claimed how local IT company Axact allegedly earned millions of dollars from scams involving fake degrees, non-existent online universities and manipulation of customers.
In an official statement on its website, Axact has denied all the allegations. At this stage, this perhaps may not be sufficient. The company is yet to present more concrete evidence to establish that it is not involved in any wrong doing.
The conventional way of looking at fake degrees frames it as a moral dilemma based in a black and white binary of good versus bad, devoid of the murky grey area that forces one to confront the more contradictory and less pleasant aspects of power, education and society.
We fake it because more often than not, it's the only way to make it. This isn't a stamp of approval on what goes in life by those who counterfeit, forge, replicate, lie, deceive and manipulate others; this is simply showing why one (or many) fakes it to climb up the ladder in life.
Also read: Fake degrees: Former lawmakers fall like ninepins
And, it has a lot to do with economics.
To understand the robust economy of the fake certificate, diploma and degree mills out in world — not just in Pakistan — one should take a trip back to 2005, when scholars began writing about the systematic problem that plagued the world of higher education.
In one such example, Allen Ezell and John Bear’s exposé named Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas discusses how at least 300 degree mills on the internet have sold thousands and thousands of fake degrees on a weekly basis to Americans within the country, as well as others abroad, including medical and law degrees, since the 1980s.
Other examples also include disturbing revelations from 1986 when more than 5,000 fake doctors were practicing in the United States, directly putting the lives of thousands of patients on the line.
The book came out in 2005. Ten years later, the once rapidly growing scam of the yesteryears is now a multi-million dollar established, contemporary underworld industry.
Also read: Fake in Pakistan, fake across the world
For one instance, let's do the math here: Ezell Bear estimates in Degree Mills that 40,000-45,000 legitimate Ph.D.s are awarded annually in the United States while 50,000 spurious Ph.D.s are bought.
That means more than half of the degrees in the country were counterfeit degrees propelled by dubious 'accreditation' mills.
So, how do these mills prosper with such evidently endless impunity?
Why do thousands and thousands of people turn to these factories of forged credentials and fictional alma maters?
It's tough to say. Money, sure. Power, naturally. But, it has more to do with the privatisation of higher education; with free market logic permeating the world of advanced learning, many people — aspiring to obtain economic stability in an increasingly unstable economic order post-graduation — are turning to more corrupt ways to fast-forward the normally four-year degree programs (that average at a soul-crushing $80,000 annually) of the for-profit enterprise that fronts as 'education' around the world.
Education is now a neatly-packaged commodity that can be sold and bought.
To give a small glimpse of the mammoth-sized burden placed on students in these predatory institutions, consider the $30,000 (or often more) debt placed on students in the United States where many are simply ditching these neoliberal syndicates for more conveniently-won fake degrees. A fake degree? In many cases, $1,000 with a hefty risk on both the buyer and the business owner.
Also read: 300 PIA employees sacked for fake degrees
Additionally, it won't hurt anyone to say it's about approval and status.
The approval you get from society for having made it; the approval you get from employers for carrying a meticulous brain in that skull of yours demonstrated by your dignified degree that means better labour skills (or not — don't hold me to that one); the approval for holding a degree no matter how forged the credentials on it are; the approval you get from peers for going up the ladder, not down, no matter how amoral the climbing was.
And it's about status. In Pakistan's context, we are self-righteous die-hard fans of all that glitters and shines — regardless of how hollow the substance is. So, it isn't exactly a surprise that we may be having degree mills running under proud noses then.
Success in our world is about getting in and making it by hook or by crook. And when the tough gets going or when the tough gets heavily privatised and commodified, you will always have someone (or several thousand for that matter) willing to fake it big time to make it big time.
And, you've got culprits on both sides.