KUALA LUMPUR – A graduate claimed that the doctor of philosophy (PhD) degree he received from the public university, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), was not recognized abroad.
Malaysia Gazette reported, Saed Jnaidi from Palestine obtained his PhD in the Mass Communication program after graduating from UPM in 2019. However, it all came to light when the PhD had not been accredited by the Malaysian Government when he applied for a visa to enable him to get a one -year orientation in the Netherlands.
Clearly, as a residence permit holder, he is allowed to work and live in the Netherlands without restrictions. However, he was disappointed because he missed the opportunity only because of the failure of accreditation on the part of UPM, the news portal added.
“To obtain a visa, applicants must have completed at least a master’s or post-doctoral program or have obtained a PhD degree from an internationally recognized educational institution abroad which is in the top 200 in the list.
“Therefore, I applied for a visa that was included with the UPM PhD accreditation certificate in January. Unfortunately, the PhD in Mass Communication I received did not get recognition.
“I was informed through a letter received from the accreditation body in the Netherlands, namely Nuffic, that the PhD was not recognized,” he said in a statement.
Saed, who is also a holder of a Bachelor’s degree from the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) and a master degree from Limkokwing University, said that he has been informed by MQA that the PhD program, which had taken five years of study, had not been officially registered with the agency, thus confirming the statement issued by Nuffic.
Saed added that the same problem also happened to another UPM graduate from Palestine, Alaa Husain who graduated from the same program in 2018.
“Based on the information provided by MQA, I have gone to the UPM Quality Assurance Center (CQA) to discuss this matter further with them.
“CQA has acknowledged that they have not submitted the list of programs to MQA for registration. They only send general programs for each faculty that are not relevant to our program at MQA.
“They took action to manage this problem by sending a list of programs to MQA without including all the information required by MQA.
“Unfortunately, MQA still needs more criteria to be complied with by CQA which have not been issued by UPM to MQA until now,” he said.
Saed regretted that the issue had affected the opportunities present in his life due to the inefficiency of UPM.
He is now unable to apply for a visa or a job because the Ph.D. he holds is worthless, he said.
