Scam Oxford MBA?

Well, Mr "David Smith" has continued to feed me with information with regards to the MBA scams perpetuated by a "Oxford Centre for Leadership (OXCEL), United Kingdom" which clearly abuses its non-existent association to Oxford University to gain credibility.

First of all, the OXCEL doesn't exist beyond a mail forwarding service provided at the contact address. You can check out the address yourself at the Regus website, an international service office provider.

The OXCEL company was only purportedly set up in the United Kingdom in April this year. However, as early as last May, Oxcel has been granting degrees in Malaysia.

Yusry & co receives their degress & awards

In May last year, KRU main singer, Yusry Abdul Halim was selected to receive an special award (Young Creativity Award) from Oxcel at Oxford Graduation Ceremony in Subang Jaya. Other celebrities who apparently received their diploma, degrees are Nizal Mohamad, Ashraf Sinclair and Chef Ismail (Master in Business Hospitality).

Not only did these celebrities clearly publicised the "school", it was Deputy Minister of Human Resources, Datuk Abdul Rahman Bakar who "launched" OXCEL in Malaysia last year at Carcosa Seri Negara. The modus operandi appears very similar to other dodgy degree-granting institutions such as the non-Irish Irish International University, where Deputy Minister, M Kayveas was also invited to present degrees at convocation ceremonies, which lends credibility to the institution.

(By the way, IIU continues to exist in Malaysia despite the tonnes of information available which discredits their standing. They have been holding convocation ceremonies on a year basis since 2002)

It is understood that the next convocation ceremony for Oxcel will be held at a college of Oxford university on 12 September 2007 for their 5-day MBA programme (or some equivalent award). All the graduates are allegedly Malaysians.

I really wonder sometimes why is it that in a country such as Malaysia, there remains plenty of such bogus institutions, guillible Ministers who are easily persuadable to lend credibility to dubious organisations as well as certification-hungry students who are willing to pay good money for poor qualifications.... sigh.