Sold a European Dream, Left with Broken Promises

Since 2008 I’ve been a regular visitor to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, liking it so much that I made it a base of operations from 2024. Despite a brief rise in living quality, from 2020, the country has deteriorated with rising crime, closing businesses, and corruption infesting higher education.

When heading the international office of the Russian State Social University (RSSU), from 2019-20, one ‘urgent’ task during COVID-19 lockdown was verifying our international partner institutions register. Eastern Europe, including the Baltic States, ended up being a sore point for my prorector [deputy university head] who ordered me to keep as many as possible due to financial grants from the Ministry of Higher Education. Out of 28, 19 were legit, five had bogus sites and set-ups, and four were officially closed. One, Euroacademy in Estonia, was a degree mill and first to be struck off my list.

Another one from Estonia, the Estonian Business School (EBS), sold visas to foreign students, especially Russian, and MBAs at a knockdown price. As one lady from their international office informed me in April 2020, “We can do a one-year course for you for ten thousand dollars…And you get a European MBA.” When I asked if there were classes or exams, or even a thesis defence, she laughed. “You are a busy professional we take the pressure off and guide you through the process.” The “guide” cost $1,500 extra and would write my thesis, or re-package someone else’s.

Alongside the EBS was another questionable outfit, the Vilnius Business College (VBC) and that is one that has thoroughly defeated my optimism in Lithuanian higher education. A lecturer from VBC had taken part in an international conference at RSSU in October 2019. During a tea break, she offered her services to our university, declaring her institution was little more than a sham. In 2020, I put an asterisk next to VBC.

Six years on and conversations with current and former students, lecturers, and admin staff, led me back to VBC. What I discovered proved that my concerns had foundations in reality. And as well as academic incompetence and corruption, there is an additional layer of financial impropriety that Lithuania’s Ministry of Education, Science, and Sport are terrified to tackle.

If you remember the issue concerning Anuj, he was one of the victims of VBC. It was after our meeting earlier this year that I began to dig into this operation and I had far more questions than just the place being part of a people trafficking network.

Money for nothing, and no education

“There are cases where we take money from students [for enrollment] and then when their applications are refused, we drag out the repayment process so much that they give up,” a member of the Finance Department informed me. She had reached out to a journalist from the local Verslo žinios [Business News] newspaper, who passed along her contact to me.

“It’s [VBC] taking money from students, foreign ones, who don’t [study] in the place. They pay, get visas, some graduate, but it’s not real,” she added.

One student, Ahmad, from Pakistan, confirmed her accusations. Now working as a taxi driver in Vilnius, he enrolled in a BA course [Programming and Internet Technologies] only to find that the ‘education’ he received was far less than he expected.

“I came very motivated and in the first semester I was the only foreign student attending classes, the others were working or not here.”

Ahmad completed his first year and transferred to a state university. Five years later he holds a Master’s in Technology and works part-time as an Uber driver while working full-time as a programmer with an American company.

“It [VBC] was a great disappointment to me as I paid a lot of money for what I thought would be a good education.”

I reached out to the VBC international office and was informed that nobody could answer my questions. The person I spoke with, a local, said that I should visit their office, but would need to make an appointment first. I tried, but there were no available slots, for a fortnight.

I personally contacted Samson Toye Abiodun, Head of the International Relations Department, including by email on July 14, he has not responded. I also gave the college a chance to reply, however they too have not responded to any requests.

“It’s not unusual for them,” the member of the Finance Department told me. “They ignore questions, complaints, because they will go away. They get the money, pay the agents, and who cares then.”

“They ripped off Indians, everyone”

I was told the story of an Indian student who had come to Lithuania to study Cyber Security Technologies. She had been sold on the idea of studying, working, and going straight into the ranks of a top US company after graduation by an education agent at an expo in Delhi.

“The girl was accepted, got her visa, arrived in Vilnius and was told she had to wait for a week to get her room [in student accommodation]. Then some friend of the head of the international office [Abiodun] offered a room at a hostel. She took it, for two weeks, a month, nobody helped and she was paying by week what she was to pay in a month,” the journalist from Verslo žinios told me.

It was this situation that caught their attention. The girl, reportedly from Delhi, spent 5 weeks in a hostel room, paying €350 per week [a single room in a dorm costs €400 per month according to the VBC website]. Five other foreign students I spoke with encountered the same situation.

“Nobody here [in VBC] seemed to care, they just ignored her and when she left [to return home], one of them [international office] came to me to make sure we [do] not refund her fees,” the person from the financial office added.

“They ripped off Indians, everyone, it’s almost a scam,” the journalist said. Adding, “It makes a mockery of our whole country being the bright Baltic jewel with money and IT, when this shabby behaviour is left unchecked. And the smell of human trafficking is very, too strong.”

The Ministry of Education, who are supposed to regulate such matters, declined to go on the record, but admitted that they had “received complaints” about VBC and that all were treated seriously.

Degrading grades

A former teacher from the college claimed that she had been pressured into marking students present and “giving good grades” in spite of poor quality or no work.

“It’s not a very rigorous place and they make automat [passing without taking an exam] for people who have ‘life experience’. I was told indirectly [by the international office] to pass one student as they had been good in volunteering. I refused, as I never once saw him in class. It went quiet, but then this guy got a diploma and I had apparently given him a passing grade. I turned down the new contract and left,” she told me at a cafe in Vilnius.

She also remarked that VBC has become a “go to” place for students who fail at other institutions in Lithuania and that many students arrive but disappear after a semester or year.

“It’s a scam operation,” Mark said, when I asked him about his time at VBC. Mark completed his first year at the college before leaving to study at Vilnius University (VU). Now in his third year at the top-ranked institution, the American student explained why he chose VBC.

“My family come from here [Lithuania] and to be honest, it was way cheaper than even a community college at home [Michigan].”

“I arrived early to visit Mom’s folks, then Dad’s, then came to Vilnius to move into the dorm, but they [a member of the international office] told me my transcript was a problem, even though they’d accepted it [previously]. One guy [he named a specific person from the office] said he’d fix it for a small fee, I paid, he did and then they said, your room won’t be ready. They gave me a number to call of this African guy, and he offered me a room at a hostel. Two weeks later and it was excuse after excuse. My Mom’s brother found me a room in a house so I moved there.”

“I asked this African guy [from the hostel] for my deposit back, he accused me of breaking a window and door and said he’d tell them [college].”

His initial experience was just a taste of what was to come.

“I mean, I had better teachers in middle school. Lessons were a joke, people got grades for nothing, even people who didn’t come to class were passing. There was this constant pressure to go work and I saw guys from Bangladesh come to class in their courier uniforms, get signed in, then leave. I applied for VU and was accepted, and I was even happy repeating first year. Just to escape.”

Criminality or just business?

Anuj’s experience was instructive. He had been brought in via an agency based in Lviv, Ukraine. When I asked the journalist and the member of the VBC finance office about the involvement of scam agencies, both believed it was still actual.

“It’s not just VBC, or Lithuania, but the whole of the Baltic region,” the journalist stated. “Criminal gangs from Ukraine are the norm here and you don’t mess with them. They have operations from people smuggling to drugs to prostitution. And it’s not like we [Lithuanians] needed any education on that.”

“I have made payments to companies in Poland and Ukraine for ‘services’,” the finance office member said. “Using agencies is not forbidden and I know it is usual everywhere.”

She did have a concern, however, that often it was the same recipient using different registered entities across different jurisdictions. When she raised it with her boss, the woman told her to do her job.

Lithuania: Going for bust?

As a nation, it is struggling. In June, inflation hit 5.7%, up on May and at the highest rate since 2023. The glass and smoke, being blown by well-paid influencers brought to Vilnius at a high cost to local taxpayers, show is faltering badly. Housing and utilities and transport are up by 12% and 13.4% respectively from last year. Foreign companies are slowing or freezing hiring campaigns and at least 2 tech companies are returning to Belarus, quietly. As an employment agency exec would tell me, “if they’re going back to Belarus, you know it’s not good.”

Youth unemployment is 13.6%, lower than the EU average of 15.2%, but devastating when many of the jobs usually reserved for students are being carried out by foreign workers. Of the 4-5,000 food courier jobs in Vilnius alone, close to 70% of those employed are Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, or “other Asians” according to Voodoo, the country’s leading employment agency.

The Voodoo executive went on to tell me that “it is a boom time for those, you know, colleges who get people here. You don’t need to speak Lithuanian or Russian, you just show up and work.” He also mentioned that there is a downward pressure on wages due to this, with locals being priced out of the market.

“It’s cheaper for many companies to hire foreign students or workers, because they put [in] longer hours for less money.” I was surprised that he was so open about this as when I asked the Ministry of Education about abuse of the student visa system, and students, they refused to go on the record with their answer.

Scam college or just modern Higher Education

One campus of the Vilnius Business College takes up most of the former Grata Hotel. A place I spent two nights in with my son a decade ago when we were traveling back from Ireland.

It’s been very roughly reformatted as a place of learning, with a number of students telling this journalist that it’s a “decent,” “convenient,” or “good” venue/location. And it is. Located not far from the centre of the old town, with transport links nearby, the shabby surrounds don’t really impinge on what happens inside.

It is very difficult to state for a fact that VBC is a degree mill. What can be stated is that they are unresponsive to students, staff, and media. It can also be stated that they have positioned themselves as not just a seat of learning for students from South Asia and Africa, but a bridge to western Europe. And that alone, for a person who has recruited students and knows how the games are played, marks it out for special attention for those fighting human trafficking. And I can state, without a shadow of doubt, that if I were head of the international office of a major university again, I would not partner with them, and that as a parent I would never allow my child darken their door.