NUS to expel students who gained admission through fraudulent means, NTU to take disciplinary action
Shermaine Ang
The Straits Times
Nov 2, 2025
Singapore's two largest universities have put up advisories cautioning prospective applicants against purported study-abroad agencies on Chinese social media platforms offering paid services that claim to help applicants secure "guaranteed" admissions to their postgraduate degree programmes.
The National University of Singapore's (NUS) advisory on its website said the agencies will typically employ fraudulent means such as fabricating academic qualifications and other credentials in application packages to mislead universities.
The university said candidates need to fulfil stipulated qualifying criteria and all applications are reviewed based on merit. "There are no 'guaranteed', 'fast track' or 'direct' admission routes to NUS," it added.
Checks on Xiaohongshu found many such agencies offering "direction admission" to NUS and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Most of the agencies target those with poor high school grades or low undergraduate GPAs, and who have yet to pass English proficiency tests such as the International English Language Testing System.
One agency, Zhongsheng International, offers to help students enter NUS and NTU, among other top universities worldwide, at fees starting from 300,000 yuan (S$55,000).
On its website, the agency claims it was set up in 2017, and that it works with universities to serve more than 1,000 customers annually.
Another account called Flying Career also offers university applicants recommendation letters from professors at top universities, and purports to be able to help applicants pass background checks.
Both agencies did not respond to queries from The Straits Times on the legitimacy of their services.
In response to queries, NUS said it will terminate the candidature of any student found to have gained admission through fraudulent means, and is enhancing its systems to verify credentials.
NTU will take disciplinary action against any students who breach its codes of conduct, including through falsification, fabrication and facilitating academic dishonesty.
The university said it has previously invalidated applications containing falsified documents, adding that the number of fraudulent applications "remains very low".
Both universities said they do not work with any study-abroad agencies for admissions purposes.
NTU said applications for its coursework-based postgraduate programmes, which are popular with foreign students, have risen by about 30 per cent a year since 2023. The institution has received about 48,000 applications for postgraduate courses in 2025, it said.
In coursework-based postgraduate programmes, students follow a prescribed course of study comprising several courses, as opposed to postgraduate research programmes, which focus on independent, supervised research.
NUS also said in its advisory that it is seeing "increasingly intense competition" in gaining admission to its postgraduate programmes.
In a post on its official account on social media app WeChat in January, NUS said any enrolled student or graduate found to have obtained admission through fraudulent means will have his student status or awarded degree revoked.
NUS said it conducts verification checks with universities and institutions awarding the academic qualifications. It added that it will be enhancing its systems with secure authentication software to verify credentials.
The university's website also states that when international applicants arrive in Singapore to enrol in NUS, they must bring along original copies of their identification, high school results, and other documents that they submitted in their application.
According to its website, NUS reserves the right to expel students who fail to turn up for the verification of documents or provide required documents.
NTU said applicants who present overseas credentials must obtain an official verification report from one of its approved credential verification agencies. For universities from China, these include China Qualifications Verification and China Higher Education Student Information and Career Centre.
Applications found to contain falsified documents will be rejected, NTU said.
Observers said the high ranking of both universities is a contributing factor for fraudulent applications.
NUS kept its eighth place in the latest Britain-based Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings 2026, released in June, while NTU rose three places to 12th.
Dr Jason Tan, an associate professor of policy, curriculum and leadership at the National Institute of Education, said academic fraud is a longstanding issue that is being made worse by technological advancements and an increasingly competitive job market.
He cited the admissions scandal in 2024 at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), where more than 30 master's students were found to have forged academic qualifications to secure their places at HKU's business school.
According to Hong Kong daily The Standard, HKU has since affirmed its commitment to tackle admissions fraud, reporting cases of suspected fraud to the police.
Associate Professor Tan said universities need to go beyond rejecting fraudulent applications, and send a strong message of deterrence to prospective applicants and fraudsters.
He said academic fraud threatens the legitimacy of genuine credentials, the reputation of the universities involved, and even Singapore's standing as an international academic hub.
The penalising of academic fraud should extend to the use of fake credentials in the workplace, he added.
In one case, a woman forged a certificate for a bachelor's degree in engineering from NTU and cheated at least five companies into hiring her between 2005 and 2021. She was jailed for eight months from December 2023.
Her offences came to light only when her employer, Walt Disney, sent her fake certificate to a third-party validation vendor, who checked with NTU about her qualifications.
Singapore Management University associate professor of law Eugene Tan said that for Singapore's autonomous universities, foreign students are a lucrative market for graduate degree programmes where admission numbers and tuition fees are not as tightly regulated as for undergraduate programmes.
He added that given the academic reputations of Singapore's universities, the desire to secure admission to them could tempt some applicants to resort to unethical, or even illegal, ways to make their applications stand out.
Professor Tan said efforts must be made to collaborate with overseas institutions to verify applicants' academic credentials.
"The question is not whether there will be attempts by applicants to commit academic fraud, but rather, how to manage it so that the integrity of the admission process is not compromised," he added.
