The Ministry of Education and Sciences (MEC) filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office on Friday, June 20 regarding 145 fake teaching degrees, following an internal audit requested by the Prosecutor's Office itself amid suspicions surrounding 1,500 diplomas of questionable authenticity. Education Minister Luis Ramírez had announced the previous Tuesday the existence of 250 non-authentic diplomas in Education Sciences, lacking traceability, where it is unclear whether the supposed graduates even exist at the involved universities, and which may have even had the institutions' seals forged.
The MEC audit was recommended by prosecutor Teresa Sosa Laconich, who, after an initial complaint, investigated the matter and currently has 14 teachers charged with holding fake teaching licenses, all linked to Teacher Training Institutes (IFD). "These are people who allegedly presented teaching credentials that qualify them to teach in public schools. Some are even directors of educational institutions," the prosecutor warned.
José Duarte, president of the National Agency for Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education (Aneaes), stated that the lack of an updated registry at the National Council of Higher Education (Cones) created a "regulatory black hole" in the country. He argued that Cones should apply Resolution 166/15, which grants powers to intervene, close, or impose improvement plans on responsible institutions. Duarte, who was previously academic director of Cones before leading Aneaes, highlighted that without a clear distinction between active and inactive programs in the council's registry, more than 5,000 programs may continue issuing degrees, according to data released by MEC itself.
"We are surprised when we see at MEC an impressive number of people registering their degrees 10 years after the program was declared inactive. This is one of the mechanisms producing fake degrees," Duarte said. He cited the emblematic case of former senator Hernán Rivas, who resigned from the National Congress amid an investigation into his allegedly irregular law degree, registered in 2020, five years after Universidad Sudamericana declared the law program closed. "That is why I publicly said that, to me, Rivas was not a lawyer," said the Aneaes president.
Duarte maintained that the diploma-selling scheme is much larger than the 1,500 cases under suspicion by the Prosecutor's Office. "This is just the tip of the iceberg; only 5% of postgraduate degrees are accredited, and the quality control rate is very low," he emphasized.
Jorge García Riart, a former Cones member, attributed the phenomenon to what he called "credentialism"—the social and state obsession with requiring an academic diploma for any professional advancement, above actual knowledge. "Credentialism is obtaining a degree to secure a better position, a job, or higher pay in the public sector. MEC itself recognized this as a risk and reduced the required percentage of diplomas in public teaching job competitions," he said. García Riart also called on MEC to publish the results of its internal audits and questioned the progress of an investigation announced in 2024 regarding Universidad María Serrana, whose outcome remains unknown.
The expert further proposed that the Unified Registry of Higher Education Students (RUES) become the official document replacing study certificates issued by universities, since, according to him, there is currently no way to verify if RUES data matches the certificates issued by institutions.