Uni watchdog accused of ‘error’

The education minister has accused a watchdog of a “serious error” over its inspection of a Malaysian college which offered University of Wales courses.

Leighton Andrews criticised the failure of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) to check that college staff had valid qualifications.

BBC Wales’ Week In Week Out programme showed the director of Fazley International College (FICO) held a bogus qualification.

The QAA has been asked for a response.

The minister also written to the body responsible for funding Welsh universities to ask them to conduct a wide ranging investigation into the University of Wales’ activities.

Mr Andrews told the Higher Education Funding Council he wants it to examine the “efficacy and transparency of the current franchising and quality system of the university”.

The QAA’s role is to safeguard quality and standards in UK Higher Education, including British qualifications delivered by overseas colleges.

The minister said the evidence presented in Week In Week Out indicated “a serious systemic failure in both the validation processes and quality control has occurred.”

He has asked to know whether a key change in the QAA’s advice to universities about their overseas partners was as a result of the BBC Wales investigation.

Mr Andrews has also asked for a full update on what contact the QAA has had with the University of Wales since the programme was transmitted.

Week In Week Out revealed that Fazley Yaakob, who ran FICO in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, was claiming to have both a masters and a doctorate in business administration.

He stepped down following the programme’s broadcast.

The BBC has asked the QAA and University of Wales for a response to Mr Andrews’s letter.

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