Employers seeking to verify if an academic degree certificate of a job seeker is legitimate will soon be able to do so on real-time if Parliament endorses a Bill seeking the introduction of a central database for every university.
Mandera South Abdul Haro has introduced to Parliament the Universities (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 2023 which is seeking to make the changes that will also save job seekers from physically travelling to their former universities to get copies of their degrees certified.
“The principal object of the Bill is to amend the Universities Act, to provide a database in every college or university that will allow members of the general public to digitally ascertain the authenticity of papers acquired from the institutions,” reads the memorandum of the Bill.
“The object of the Bill is to ensure that Kenyans are saved the inconvenience of physically walking to universities to have their certificates verified.”
The Bill’s memorandum adds that the online digital certificates will come in handy during frequent university strikes, elections and epidemics when it becomes difficult to get approval on time.
Access to the database will be subject to the Data Protection Act, ensuring that the information is only used for the intended purposes.
The digital dataset is also expected to cut rampant cases of fake academic certificates in an economy where the number of job seekers is rising, leading to cut-throat competition for the few opportunities available.
The universities regulator, Commission for University Education, has in the past raised the alarm over the increased use of fake degrees to secure the few job openings in the job market.
The public and private sector is replete with cases of fake certificates. Several politicians, were for instance, last year found with fake certificates which they were hoping to use for elective positions.
The government, through the Kenya National Qualifications Authority (KNQA), in 2021 launched a new system dubbed Report Cheti Mwitu for reporting cases of fake certificates
