LOS ANGELES, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Transcripts from foreign students applying to nearly a dozen graduate programs at UCLA will be getting closer scrutiny from admissions officials who are growing more concerned about forgeries, the Los Angeles Times said Friday.
The discovery of allegedly falsified records submitted by a Chinese student prompted the university to tighten up its paperwork reviews, although the concern is primarily aimed at ferreting out unqualified applicants for 11 science programs rather than terrorist infiltrators.
"We want them to have impeccable credentials when they get here, and as well when they leave here," said Davis Meter, director of UCLA Access, an organization for biomedical and life sciences graduate programs at the Los Angeles campus.
Meyer told the Times that the students being scrutinized were "future researchers, and that scientific integrity was important to us."
While applicants from all nations will be affected by the increased scrutiny, Meyer said China was of particular concern because of the widespread practice of having the students send in their transcripts rather than the university they attended. The practice creates the opportunity for the applicants to insert forged documents into the paperwork sent to UCLA and other U.S. colleges.
Timothy McDonough, a spokesman for the American Council on Education, told the Times that the falsification of applications was a growing concern among many U.S. institutions.
"It's not only an issue of students from China," he said. "With the availability of counterfeit diplomas, and transcripts available over the Internet, this problem could become much more widespread."
UCLA is seeking to establish a working relationship with four Chinese universities where a majority of China's graduate school applicants come from in order to develop a means of verifying transcripts. Meyer said Chinese schools generally refuse to respond to verification requests from the United States.
"I'm not entirely convinced that university administrators at these places are particularly thrilled about their best graduates heading off to the United States, knowing that a large percentage of them will never come back," he said.
