I REFER to last Saturday's commentary by Ms Sandra Davie, 'Make dodgy degrees illegal?', on making it illegal to buy and sell fake degrees and use them as legitimate documents to seek and secure jobs or business.

As one of the oldest private education institutes in Singapore, the Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS) has always held the position that degrees and other qualifications must be awarded to students who have put in all the necessary academic and practical work and who have met the exacting standards required.

Buying and selling fake qualifications demeans the value of legally issued and genuinely earned degrees.

We hope the authorities will clamp down on dodgy degrees, and genuine degrees issued in Singapore will once again shine with the lustre that has made the country a trustworthy global brand for excellence in education.

We also trust that with the new Private Education Act in place, the much-needed ground rules for the management of private educational institutions will be adhered to.

MDIS has forwarded its comments to the authorities on the draft private education regulations as part of the feedback process.

We hope the authorities will not deal with too heavy a hand in their attempt to regulate the sector, but instead will balance the need to professionalise the private education sector with the need to encourage the continual spirit of enterprise.

For this to happen, the authorities must continue to monitor private education institutes to ensure full compliance and that all regulatory mechanisms are fully exercised with no room for illegitimate peddling of degrees.

Dr R. Theyvendran
Secretary-General
Management Development Institute of Singapore

This article was first published in The Straits Times.