PHIL$102$ Ethical Lens Case Study

Wri$en by Charles Carroll, Adapted by Yuya Takeda

Ethical Lens Case Study$$Recrui$5$ng Suraya Khan

Suraya Khan moved from a faraway country to come to Canada to study at a university. Like

nearly all internaAonal students she was recruited to come here by an educaAon agent. Agents

are paid by the head, by the number of students they enrol. The more students an agent enrols

the more money they make.

The main barrier for an educaAon agent is providing correct and accurate documentaAon for

the student$$s previous course of study. This process is both complicated and Ame consuming.

LeIers or emails need to be sent to each of the insAtuAons the student aIended. At that

insAtuAon someone needs to pull up the record of the parAcular student and then send this

informaAon back to the recruiter, who then sends it on to the university. The people assigned to

this task are usually low$-$level clerical employees who are juggling dozens, perhaps hundreds of

requests at the same Ame. The recruiter has no control over this process, and understandably

some students fall through the cracks. SomeAmes the person at the other end sends the wrong

file, or sends it late, or doesn$$t send it at all. For any recruiter, Ame is money, and these delays

mean a loss of revenue while the recruiter is waiAng for documentaAon to come through.

Suraya$$s recruiter was a man named Mohammed. Mohammed was a good family man and a

long Ame and well$-$established agent, but he had been feeling a lot of financial pressure lately.

Suraya$$s file was parAcularly difficult because she was an older student and had aIended a

number of insAtuAons, and in one case the appropriate transcript for Suraya$$s course of study

simply didn$$t arrive, despite Mohammed$$s many, many requests for it$.$ So$,$ because he needed

the money, and the university Suraya was to aIend paid a top commission, he sent on Suraya$$s

file even though it was incomplete.

Despite her incomplete file, Suraya was admiIed to the university Mohammed had directed her

to$.$ Overjoyed, Suraya, her husband and her two daughters booked their flight to Canada and

began the long and complicated process of finding housing for the family, schools for her girls,

and a job for her husband. Moving to Canada was a dream the family had long held, and it was

finally coming true.

Suraya worked hard in her program and got excellent grades. All her professors commended her

for her responsibility, conscienAousness, and ethical character. She was always the first to help

out other students with problems. Everything seemed to be going well unAl it came Ame to

graduate. One month before she was due to receive her diploma, the registrar$$s office at the

university sent her a message that her file was incomplete and that her graduaAon would be

held up if the file couldn$$t be completed on Ame. Suraya was surprised, as this was the first she

had heard about this.

The incomplete documentaAon was a big problem for Suraya because she had already applied

for Canadian permanent residency, but to be successful in her applicaAon she would need to

show that she had received a degree from an approved higher educaAon insAtuAon. Without a

PHIL$102$ Ethical Lens Case Study

Wri$en by Charles Carroll, Adapted by Yuya Takeda

diploma she would not be able to receive permanent residency and her file would be rejected,

forcing her to start all over in the long process of becoming a Canadian.

Desperate, she called up Mohammed and asked him what she could possibly do; there were

only a few weeks leX before graduaAon, and she needed that last transcript badly. Mohammed

tried to soothe her: $$Don$$t worry, I$$ll take care of it$,$ he told her. $$There$$s so liIle Ame leX,$$ she

said, $$what are you going to do$?$I$$m simply going to create the transcript$$it won$$t be real,

but the university won$$t noAce or care. When I send it to you, just take it straight to the

registrar. Whatever you do$,$ don$$t say anything. Leave everything to me; you can trust me$.$

The transcript arrived the next day and Suraya duAfully took it to the registrar to complete her

file. She knew the transcript was false; Mohammed had told her so in the note he had aIached

to the transcript file, but she was desperate. So much was at stake$$the enAre life she had

worked so hard to build for her family here in Canada. She hoped against hope that everything

would go fine.

But later that week she received a call from the University Registrar. Someone in their office had

noAced that the address on the school transcript was not the same as that on the website of

the school and they were concerned. Could Suraya explain what had happened? Meanwhile,

Mohammed was nowhere to be found.

$1\mathrm{.}1.$ You have been appointed the head of an imparAal panel of judges who must decide what to

do about Suraya$$s misrepresentaAon of herself$$in essence engaging in a lie about her

qualificaAons. MisrepresentaAon of qualificaAons is normally grounds for expulsion from the

university. Your job is to p