The ministry subsequently issued a warning to Brookes, which is owned by 39-year-old Benny Yap Chee Mun, in June of that year.

But as it “did not receive further indication from RMIT”, the ministry considered “the matter to be resolved through private action between the parties concerned”, said Senior Minister of State (Trade and Industry and Education) S Iswaran in a written response to questions by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Jurong GRC, Madam Halimah Yacob, on Brookes’ fake degrees yesterday.

According to Mr Iswaran, the MOE’s warning came after the well-known Australian university wrote in to complain that Brookes had been advertising RMIT’s programmes on its website.

In the same letter, RMIT also said that it had obtained an undertaking from Brookes to remove all references to the university or face legal action.

When contacted by Today last evening, Mdm Halimah wondered if more could have been done to “save a lot of people from heartache”.

“The reply (by Mr Iswaran) seems to imply that since RMIT did not come back to MOE, therefore, they assumed everything is okay,” she said in a telephone interview. “Between the time they received the complaint up to now, two years have passed and many more students have been affected.”

Brookes, which had an enrolment of 400 students, was ordered to shut down on July 12 for peddling fake degrees from brand-name institutions for as little as $12,000.

Mr Yap has alleged that a Vietnamese man duped him into buying a franchise offering RMIT degrees in August 2007.

Mdm Halimah said MOE “should have taken stern action” much earlier. “Can you imagine the people who have paid, got their degree and now have resigned because they don’t want to be accused of cheating?”

However, episodes like the Brookes’ fake degree fiasco may soon be a thing of the past. The Government had said earlier that a Bill would be tabled later this year to give the MOE more teeth when dealing with errant educators.

Once the Bill becomes law, an independent Council for Private Education (CPE) will oversee regulatory issues.

In his written reply, Mr Isawaran said that the MOE also plans to raise consumer awareness through more extensive public education. This includes the establishment of a student information centre to provide consumers with relevant information, such as the listing of external degree programmes registered with the ministry.

“This list has been publicly available since 2002 and put on MOE’s website even prior to the RMIT’s complaint against Brookes in 2007. Members of the public are advised to check degrees offered by private education providers with this list,” said Mr Iswaran. “… The CPE will require education providers to specifically inform prospective students if degrees offered by them are on the list.”

A former student at Brookes, who declined to be named, said he was “not aware of any such list or the fact that the school had been warned”.

The Singaporean added: “We chose the school because it had the CaseTrust accreditation and was registered with the MOE.”

Given that many private schools carry these two marks in their advertising, it is “completely unsurprising” that the members of the public cannot tell the difference between genuine institutions and bogus degree mills, said Ms Josephine Teo, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Education.

“We have a very trusting population, especially of anything associated with the Government,” said Mrs Teo, who is also the MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC. “As such, the ministry should have stepped in earlier to regulate the sector because there is so much value attached to that registration.”