Staff at Hong Kong's Shue Yan University got from Philippine institution 'out of expediency'

Shue Yan University said it was out of "expediency" that 11 of its teaching staff members were graduates of one of three Philippine tertiary institutions implicated in helping fast-track students' doctoral degrees.

The privately funded university added, however, that no plagiarism was detected upon review of the theses of employees who graduated from Bulacan State University.

Shue Yan's clarification yesterday came amid a growing scandal stemming from claims the private Lifelong College was behind the acceleration of PhDs granted by the three Philippine schools, also including Tarlac State University - one of whose graduates was Lingnan University associate vice-president Herdip Singh, who quit last week.

"The ease of getting a [doctoral] degree was definitely one of the considerations [of the staff involved] back then," Shue Yan's academic vice-president, Professor Catherine Sun Tin-lun, said.

"They might think [the then Shue Yan College] was recognised as Hong Kong's first self-funded university [in 2006] and they themselves would also need to obtain doctoral degrees as soon as possible ... They chose this method under the constraints of time and money. One could say this was out of expediency for the university."

Anti-plagiarism computer software widely used in local academia found no foul play in their theses, Sun said.