Choo Zheng Xi / Editor-in-chief
Despite claiming to provide accreditation to the UK Institute of Linguists, the private education provider does not seem to know how to spell.
This article will be progressively updated. Check back at a later time for more updates.
PRIVATE Education provider Harriet Educational Group has engaged lawyers to threaten defamation actions against popular local current affairs discussion forum SGforums.
(Graphic: Web banner on Harriet’s website.)
The lawyer’s letter to SGforums allege that a number of postings about Harriet Educational Group “impute improper, unethical, and even criminal behaviour” to the school. It demands that the website pay damages to be negotiated, as well as legal costs to date.
The letter also demands that the forum disclose the full names and particulars of the persons who made the comments.
The website of Harriet Educational Group claims that its job consultancy subsidiary “provides our students a written job guarantee in the United States, Australia, China, India or Singapore” for participants of their “Global Guarantee Job Program”.
Although Harriet’s website touts a translation certification recognized by the UK Institute of Linguistics, Harriet’s website contains several glaring grammatical and spelling errors. Under the section on its vision statement, it claims “we are committed that all our students received an International qualifications recognized by universities and professional institutions and employers worldwide”. (underline added)
It further states that “We will advice prospetive students on pre-requisites and requirements applicable to the various courses” and that they are “committed to protest students againts non-conformance to course guidelines”. (underline added)
Harriet Educational Group is no stranger to controversy. The Straits Times reported on September 15 2008 that at least nine people filed police reports against the school. The complainants claimed that Harriet used false testimonials to entice them to fork out money to be a licensed agent of the school.
A blog post on the Harriet Educational Group blog dated September 2008 advertised a position as an “Educational consultant promising that applicants could earn $10,000 a month if they forked out $56,000 in capital. In broken English, the advertisement reads:
“Are you still wished to become a Harriet Educational Consultant? Are wished you could earn at least $10,000 a month with Harriet Educational Group? Are you able to fork out $56K as capital or take an education loan to be an Education Consultant?”
A review of Harriet posted on an Indian website for Indian nationals looking to study overseas complained that for specialization courses such as an MBA, the school does not promise teaching staff unless there is a minimum class size of eight. The commentor, Sunish, noted that some of the programmes the school offered were good, but the college staff seemed more interested in meeting sales targets. He felt that college representatives were “just salesmen waiting to make a sale”.
Have you had a bad experience with Harriet Educational Group, or do you know people who have? Send tip-offs and information about complaints regarding the private educational service provider to theonlinecitizen@gmail.com
Related posts:
- TOC Report: PM Lee at NUS Ministerial Forum
- Growing income gap threatens social fabric
- TOC report: Public forum on ASEAN Human Rights Working Group
- SIM is “private institution”, so no fare concession
- A response to MM Lee’s private secretary on dialects
Interesting, will monitor this news.
Another dodgy service provider, adding to one reported in the ST by Sandra Davies on fake RMIT degrees.
Serious gaps here. EDB brings in the business to boost the economy and ‘create jobs’, but no one wants to step to regulate and ensure continuing compliance. Not the MOE, nor the quasi-governmental CASE.
Looks like someone needs to come up with the NEA of education service providers.
I believe Harriet touted itself as an MOE approved institution. Never checked it out though. Attended one of its seminar some years back. The presentation sounded more like sales talk to get people to sign up for its courses.
Very the good that such case happens.
As no one is actively regulating, supervising and monitoring, private educational businesses were frequently in the news because of irregularities.
Reports of dissatisfactions, uninformed closures of private schools, incompetent teaching staff, disputes between students and the private schools etc are in themselves some forms of self-cleansing and justice seeking in a poorly governed sector(educational).
Thanks TOC for this news article. I was not aware there was a lawsuit against SGF.
What a bloody joke! Can’t spell, can’t write and don’t know a single thing about teaching.
Are we getting desperate?
Liverpool in Singapore 26 July 2009
[ Looks like someone needs to come up with the NEA of education service providers ]
Not another stat board, please.
Heheheheheheh.
Should change the name to HARRIED MIS-EDUCATIONAL GROPE !
For an institution with a UK translation certificate, I find it weird that they use American spelling. e.g. recogniZed instead of recogniSed.
In regards to the Brooks supposed RMIT franchise, why would they deal with someone from Vietnam who claimed to be an agent? Surely, you would deal straight with RMIT and a representative from Melbourne. Was it convenient to have a 3rd party to lay the blame on?
Harriets could be run by a former MP or GLC boss, or have a govt official as one of its directors.
Which explains the “I’ll sue you” attitude about them. if so, then this company is “connected”.
Be careful what you say about them. Then all of you will be sued too! ;-)
I actually took up one of their courses back in 06. I think some of their courses were still well packaged then.
Disputed with them over the contents, standard of lecturers as well as accreditations about their course at CASE.
CASE claimed that they were not in the position to pursue any criminal charges that was to be filed against any business entities. Arranged one session of negotiation for me with the school, but the result was unsatisfactory as the school still claims to be in the right and will only make a small refund.
Took the case up with MOE, private schools department, but met with a wall as well, since MOE claimed that their evaluation of such schools does not govern course contents, lecturer qualifications as well as accreditations. All they care about is if there is a premise for the school (If I had not remembered wrongly).
Filed a police report but alas was to be of no news.
Parted with my near 10k school fees for a course that is worth J.S.
So, private school students beware.
Recession need extra cash is it?
What an irony. We have locals who are sacrificing hours to earn that extra money to pay for tuition fees, to upgrade their qualifications and be counted but are left abegging. At the same time, foreign nationals are coming here with certificates they brought with them (more than some are hardly able to converse or comprehend English – despite possessing a MBA or MSc in Computer Engineering) but are swiftly securing employment. And there are graduates from local universities who could only tete-a-tete of the grades they scored while in campus but can hardly comprehend a journal article. Of course, the ultimate are the scholars who are graduates of world class institutions, oblivious to reality, demanding huge paychecks (courtesy of tax payers) and incredibulous titles but are unable to pay attention to the mess their counterparts have created.
Are these debates about colleges and degrees really about education?
Education and to be more precise, to educate others is now a big money spinner.
EDUCATION IS BUT JUST ANOTHER BUSINESS(commercial enterprise)
/// “We will advice prospetive students on pre-requisites ///
Should be advise (advice is a noun). “Prerequisites” has no hyphen. Wow – 3 mistakes out of 7 words. Looks like the work of a cunning linguist to me. ;)
And that $56k sounded very Singaporean to me…
More bloopers…
HEG is an international recognized Education Provider
Our students receive international recognized degrees
to study in out Harriet Business School
higher learning education ???
Nurses are directly by our wholly owned company ???
In December 2004, the schools namely Harriet Business School (‘HBS’) – can’t make up its mind whether it is many schools or one school. Or Harvard Business School?
to create a condusive environment for studying
Hi Zheng Xi,
You should convert the URLs you had highlighted in this article into PDFs, in case Harriet Group removes them.
Thanks for the tip we’ve actually already screenshotted every page on their website.
Zheng Xi
Harriet Group is full of bulls**t. I attended one of their open-house talks last year and it was a full-on sales pitch. I suspect they are really an employment agency for the hospitality industry here… in the guise of internship or providing students with real-life work experience. And yes, perhaps some investigative work needs to be done about who’s behind this company.
Well well well… I wouldn’t have heard of Harriet Group and the alleged questionable courses if it weren’t for the defamation suit. Such legal proceedings sure have a way of backfiring through the Streisand effect!!
And it doesn’t help that, just yesterday, another “school” got into trouble by selling fake degrees.
Seriously, I think MOE and the relevant departments ought to take action. These companies are obviously taking advantage of Singapore’s somewhat squeaky clean image, especially in the education sector, to snare unsuspecting students. If these problems persist, it will have a rather negative impact on Singapore’s education sector.
It is not hard to see why MOE and CASE are responding in such a manner. Private education is an unregulated industry. If people wants the private education sector to be regulated, then we have to lobby our MPs to pass the required regulatory laws. Government and quasi-government officials cannot intervene until they have the jurisdiction to do so.
can anything be done to stop them? I have also been thru alot becos of them. I went to case trust they told me to get outside help. i dont get the point of gng to case trust at all
From what I heard in their presentations, they operated like a MLM. They recruit members (education consultants) to in turn recruit more members (students).
To be a education consultant, you pay them a fee upfront. I walked out within the first ten minutes of their presentation.
Private schools are run like a business. They need to meet profit targets too. I always advice ppl to take a certificate or diploma if they want to take up courses with a private school. Never go for a degree. It is probably a waste of time & $ & the qualification may not even be regconized. Try taking part-time with SIM, NUS or NTU instead or go overseas if permits.
24) loop
There are official listings of UK and US uni available. Check them out and the bogus ones will not be in these listings.
KopitiamApek,
Same opinion as yours. I call this a MMLM – modified MLM.
Here’s the news about Brookes’ Business School’s fake degrees.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_391479.html
20) Jackson Tan
Thanks for sharing the Streisand effect. Very interesting.
26) humanoid
There is a certain MLM marketing aroma therapy.
I heard on a radio talk show on the risks of smelling the interior of you new car, the smell emitted by petroleum by products that is in almost every component inthe car, such as plastics is toxic and very harmful.
And perfumes and nice smelling products are all petrolium by products, as natural smells cannot be retained and stored for prolonged period.
So, interestingly this particular MLM, in promoting aroma therapy, they are actually ruining your health, and while they are at that, the ruin your wealth too when you buy their overpriced “smelly things”
#28,
Worse are the magnetic mattress MLM companies. Thousands of dollars for 1 mattress. Once their sales reps start yakking, common sense about the human body and general physics start flying out of the window. Wonder what the sales pitch for MLM perfumes are like.
Our gamen never regulate MLM like that. Who knows if our VIPs are actually diamond members of MLM companies?
29) humanoid
we also must regulate our brains to not to be deceited by such MLM nincompoops, gahmen can’t reguate everything right?
MLM aroma therapy claims are something like this
that if you smell lavender, you improve your (eg- kidney function)
that if you smell rose, you enhance your (eg –lung function)
There is probably some truth to these claims IF you are smelling the real thing,
they don’t tell you you are smelling petroleum by products used to chemically sythesise the smell.
You might as well be glue sniffing.
Justmetalking CASE is a civil society formed by independent volunteers, not quasi government you retard.
Private education need government control.
Or else they will treat those who can’t get in local education institutions as carrot head.
MLM needs to be banned.
Humanoid in post 29 wondered whether our govt VIPs are diamond members of MLM companies. No lah, with their millions in salaries they do not need to be members of any MLM. What probably happened is that our VIPs in trying to create that vibrant and creative economy is that they let in foreign Sharks and Barracudas who planned to have a feeding frenzy at our expense.
The modus operandi of these substandard schools smacks of a tripartite relationship among a half-educated Singaporean, A China born Singapore PR and a Chinese National, which probably explains the substandard English. Maybe something like the Ideal Home case where the creativity and guts of the behind the scene bosses reflects their taste for doing what is illegal, tarnishes the local reputation and able to uproot and disappear when caught.
The only thing that I cannot understand is how our brilliant and talented VIPs are still clueless to their tactics and still welcoming them in with open arms while tying up the arms and legs of real local educators when they want to set up something similar.
Many private education providers spend a lot of money in advertising, brand building, creating their reputation, and spreading their good name. So if any bad news comes out, they will want to stop it from spreading, and alleging defamation is usually a quick way (except for the Streisand effect).
At the cost of a few hundred dollars probably, a lawyers notice can silence the critics as most people don’t want to go to court.
Another method in use is to allege criminal defamation which I hear is a cheaper option for the complaining party and more serious for the accused party (can mean jail sentence).
Interestingly AG stepped in on Friday 16 Oct on 3 cases of private complainants who were accusing criminal defamation (not education sector but Swimming Club). http://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/remweb/legal/ln2/rss/legalnews/64421.html?utm_source=rss%20subscription&utm_medium=rss
Education providers complaining of criminal defamation seems more rare ?
Harriet Business School has lost the CASETRUST accreditation since 5 Oct 2009. Singapore Nursing Board also terminated its nursing course accreditation since 1 Nov 2009. It seems something happen.
In another website (www.harrietint.org), I find the following
Harriet International is a leading Worldwide Distance Learning Education Body offering World Recognised Professional Executives and Business Management qualifications throughtout the World.
It also says that
1) Harriet International has more than 21,000 students worldwide
2) Harriet International access 80 universities from UK, USA, Australia
3) Harriet International has 30 years of academic excellence
Do they really have 21000 students in the world? HEG incorporated at 2003 only.