MARZUKI’S CAMBRIDGE-GATE GETS MURKIER: WHO IS ‘RAVI PRABAKARAN’ OF KUANTAN, PAHANG?

KUALA LUMPUR – It may be a Lunar New Year, but it is not mandarin oranges and ang pows headlining conversations, but ‘Cambridge’.

The issue of a deputy minister’s degree has been in the spotlight after questions were raised that his degree from the University of Cambridge, as listed on his Wikipedia page, could be fake.

The deputy minister, Datuk Marzuki Yahya has since clarified that his degree is not from the prestigious University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, but from Cambridge International University (CIU) in the United States of America.

Checks on CIU’s website returned faculty members that appear dubious.

For instance, one Professor Dr Sarah Gordon is listed as having a PhD from ‘Kentucky’ as well as ‘Italy’, an MBA from ‘Florida’ and Bachelor of Arts ‘hones’ from Peru. There is no mention of any specific universities that awarded her these degrees.

The same goes for the rest of CIU’s faculty members and adjunct faculty members. There is no mention of the universities they attended, only the country or state they got it from.

However, that is not what this article wishes to highlight.

This article wishes to ask the question of who is one ‘Ravi Prabakaran’, said to be a CEO and director of ‘Profile Consultants Resources in Kuantan, Malaysia’.

On CIU’s website, under its application form tab, is a list of the university’s ‘official partners’.

Ravi Prabakaran in Kuantan is at number 19 of that list.

There is no contact number provided for ‘Ravi Prabakaran’.

The rest of the official partners are made up of people from all over the world, from the United Kingdom to Indonesia, as well as Papua New Guinea and South Korea.

The mystery of ‘Ravi Prabakaran’ continues as his name is also listed as one of the ‘international offices’ for the University of New Imperia, based in Delaware, US.

Some of the other names in the New Imperia list also appear in the CIU list. As is the case with ‘Ravi Prabakaran’, no contact numbers are provided and a simple Google search does not return any significant results.

For instance, one ‘partner’ Farah Sydney, is said to be with the Felix Academy of Business Studies in Central London, but Google appears to not have heard of this institute.

The same goes for the Sapura Science Centre in Seoul, the Kiwi Education Inc in Papua New Guinea and the Martin Dundee Business Corp in South Africa.

The names allegedly attached to these institutions are official partners of CIU but it appears that they either don’t exist or are operating completely without leaving any digital footprints.

It deserves a mention that there is a Kiwi Education Inc in Santa Monica, and as at press time, Santa Monica is still in California and has yet to move to Papua New Guinea.

What is interesting is that both CIU and New Imperia are nice enough to have an ‘official partner’ in Malaysia, perhaps in a bid to make it easy for Malaysians who wish to further their education at these two institutions.

Afterall, a degree from CIU would only set you back by US$5,000. At the current exchange rate, this is only about RM20,354.

Although you should be aware that CIU admits their programmes are not accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the US, as stated on their website.

– NST