The list of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) scandals is growing every day. A new stigma was recently revealed in relation to higher education field.
Spanish paper, EL PAÍS, uncovered a Saudi scheme to fraudulently pump up university rankings.
Records and documents obtained by EL PAÍS indicate that he persuaded scientists from Spain and other countries to enter false information into the Clarivate database.
The newspaper reported that Saudi Arabia offered a sum of money to each academic in exchange for registering his published study at King Saud University.
It also offered another large sum to each researcher as a visiting professor, along with covering all the expenses he needed during his trip.
EL PAÍS confirmed that the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain has initiated disciplinary proceedings against a number of academics allegedly involved in the ruse.
According to the paper, several Saudi universities allegedly paid up to $77,000 per year to foreign scientists to falsely declare that their main workplaces were in Saudi Arabia. This helped the Saudi institutions artificially boost their standing in global academic ratings like the prestigious Shanghai Ranking.
Pedro Luis Rodríguez Egea, a drought expert at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Plant Biology in Valencia, was paid $66,000 in order to declare his primary workplace as King Abdulaziz University.
According to the newspaper, Saudi Arabia has put itself in a bad situation because it ought to use its wealth to send its citizens to the best universities possible rather than squandering it on bribes, buying status symbols, buying receivables, and other frivolous expenses.
