Court denies injunction to recognize PhD, but orders MQA to compensate losses

Civil Court, in the case of Maldives Qualifications Authority’s (MQA) decision to reject a PhD course conducted by a Sri Lankan college, denied the request to issue an injunction ordering MQA to recognize the qualifications of graduates, however, ordered the authority to compensate the losses incurred by the students.

Local students enrolled in the PhD course offered by Sri Lanka’s AIMs College, with a Filipino college as the awarding body, when MQA decided to recognize the course in 2016. However, MQA stopped recognition of the course in 2018.

Back then, MQA said they will recognize the qualifications of students that were already enrolled in the court. However, when graduates submitted their certificates for validation after completion of the course – the authority rejected their requests.

A civil suit was filed on behalf of three individuals over the issue. The judgment in the case delivered on Sunday read that policies on validating qualifications and recognition of foreign PhD programs did not allow the court to issue an injunction against MQA to recognize the PhD certificate.

Nevertheless, the judgment stated that MQA must bear the responsibility of the expenses incurred by the students, and losses if incurred, till January 1, 2018. One of the claimants was seeking MVR 23 million as compensation while the remaining two claimants were seeking MVR 16 million.

As the claimants failed to establish the respective amounts were incurred – Civil Court said they cannot order the payment of the sum they were seeking.

MQA said that they announced recognition of the course in 2016 without proper investigations, adding that course had not even been recognized by the Filipino government back then.