Is a doctoral degree a necessity for success in SE Asia?
In mid-2017, Mary Yap Kain Ching, Malaysia’s then-deputy minister for higher education, announced her ministry was establishing a database to verify educators and others’ doctorates.
That, Yap said, was because fake doctorates had become rampant in the country. Although she didn’t say it, an ever-growing list of parliamentarians have called themselves PhDs.