Document verification to curb fraud in online universities?

Document verification: Time is a vital thing these days and people need quick solutions for everything. Everything from grocery, clothes, and food to high-tech goods, drugs, medical equipment, etc are delivered at the doorsteps. E-commerce is rising at a tremendous pace. The education sector also played its part and many online universities have originated in the past few years. Students from every corner of the world pool to gain knowledge while sitting in their living room. But wait, are all these students eligible to get these services? The answer is “No” because fraud is prevailing in this industry as well. 

Universities often just require a scanned copy of the previous transcript and other identity documents, but you never know if the identity of the student was real. A document verification solution is a feasible solution to maintain transparency in online admissions. Such solutions help online platforms in their KYS (Know Your Student) practices. Every business plans to maintain some sort of KYC and fraud prevention solution. A document verification solution is an answer to these needs of online education platforms. 

Fraud in online universities

Fake identity credentials are used by criminals to register in online courses. Often the reason behind such frauds is that the criminal aims at taking the notes and books with copyrights to further sell them on the internet. The intellectual property of universities is of great importance. Often they have signed partnerships with the patent and copyright owners to deliver “limited” copies of the content to their students. In case the criminals get their hands on such content they make its several copies and sell them online. Such a copyright infringement may cause huge fines to the university. 

Students have invented new ways to cheat the educational institutions. The students who don’t meet the criteria use fake degrees to enroll in online courses. For example, if a student doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree in maths and he enrolls in an advanced level course through a fake degree, he might get an online degree but it will impact his performance in the professional environment. He might become a bad teacher sharing the wrong knowledge. 

Also, it will impact the credibility of that online platform that will give him a degree or certificate.  

How is document verification the solution?

Online universities have a cloud-based student presence. So, physical verification is not possible for them as students from every corner of the world are enrolled with them. It is very easy for the students to send in scanned copies of fake documents so, the universities need an online solution that could screen the students in real-time. 

Secure onboarding of students 

Online document verification solutions can check the authenticity of identity documents of students around the globe. Such solutions can verify the identity of any person within seconds. The students will not have to wait for a long time to get enrolled. They just have to show their identity documents and they will be verified within seconds. It will save the effort of the university to check the documents manually. 

Continued screening to filter identity thieves

Online education portals have often shown their concern that fake students use the credentials of their legitimate students and use the credit. When the original student comes in he/she finds out that his credit has been utilized by someone else. Ultimately the online education platform ends up making a refund. 

To wrap up, online education portals, universities and colleges can use document verification for onboarding legitimate students, with legitimate identities and degrees. It will help them in fulfilling their KYC and fraud prevention requirements in a swift manner while increasing their success rate.

Leave a Reply