February 11, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 22, 1428

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 10: The United Nations fired a staff member in November because his academic degrees turned out to come from a well-known Internet diploma mill, not a legitimate university, a UN official said on Friday.

The incident was especially embarrassing because Trinity College and University is on a list of universities and colleges offering degrees for life experiences rather than formal education that had been circulated at the United Nations, UN staff members said.

Jonathan Blankson, chief of the Human Resources Information Technology Section, had been suspended for 11 months before he was terminated, the staff members said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly.

A photocopy of his fake degrees said Trinity College and University had conferred a Bachelor of Science with honours in Computer Science on Jonathan Michael Philip Blankson on June 12, 1996, and a Master of Science in Computer Science and Information Management on May 21, 1997. It said he met all requirements of the Board of Regents and Examiners.

According to the Trinity College and University website, the master’s degree cost about $390 and the bachelors degree with honours for about $300. The website said the college “is an organisation, registered in Dover, Delaware, and running its degree programme from Spain”.

UN deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Friday the Joint Disciplinary Committee determined that a staff member, whom it did not identify, misrepresented his educational qualifications as being from a legitimate university, which “constituted serious misconduct”.—AP