Diploma register more frequently consulted

Diploma register more frequently consulted

 

Almost one and a half million diplomas were downloaded last year from the online register of the Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO). According to DUO, this is a record number.

 

In the Diploma Register, DUO collects all diplomas recognised by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science: from secondary education and intermediate vocational education to higher education. The online database has existed since 2012.

The trend that more and more people manage to find the diploma register is not new: in 2019, more than twice as many diplomas were downloaded as in the previous year. However, according to DUO, this is the first time that the number of downloads has exceeded a million in a year: a total of more than 1.4 million diplomas.

 

Outlier

One outlier is the month of June, when twice as many diplomas were downloaded as in that same month in 2019. According to DUO, this could be because students normally receive their diplomas in this month. Due to the corona measures, many did not have their paper in their pocket right away. “It seems that many students found an alternative by downloading their diploma”, reports DUO. The register was also used more often in this corona year by people who had to show a diploma for an application. 

 

Fraud

The main purpose of the online diploma register is to prevent fraud. After all, a paper document can be falsified relatively easily. Thanks to the register, employers and educational institutions can check whether someone’s diploma is genuine. The register is also useful if a diploma is lost or stolen. Graduates can then easily prove that they have actually completed a certain course of study. (HOP, Evelien Flink)