John wrote:Well were they? Or was someone else using their name etc details and producing diplomas?
After all the fact that certificates might be in circulation does not in itself prove that they were involved in their production. We could just be talking about a form of identity fraud here.
Anyone reading the current BIC website will see that all the courses there involve a diploma or certificate being produced by some other educational body. So again, BIC do not produce any diplomas or certificates of their own.
The Home Office would not grant visas to students with certificates issued by colleges blindly without verifying them with the issuing institution and at that time many institutions verified them and students were granted visas. However, when the Home Office became suspicious with these institutions due to the number of Diplomas issued, a few colleges decided to coin the term "identity fraud" to save their reputation and some even made Police reports to make things sound genuine, during this time many students had their visas refused on the grounds of deception because the colleges involved didn't verify their own Diplomas which were sold by them and claimed that those Diplomas were counterfit.
In March '09 when the new rules were released, Postgraduate Diplomas were no longer recognised under Tier-1, many of the colleges decided to come clean by offering external programmes. Well for the previously involved colleges (crooks) they are still operating and some have managed to obtain an "A" rated sponsor license and "B" rating for some who couldn't fully convince the UKBA.
As for BIC, I think they are now under Big Brother's watchful eye so, I guess they will play by the rules.
