When a Chinese student presented her with a chocolate box, Judith Bouvard was taken aback. The box contained a degree certificate. “When I challenged him he admitted it was a fake,” says Prof Bouvard, who is director of Grenoble Graduate School of Business.

“It’s so easy now for students to print off fake certificates that we spend a lot of time looking at the paper, ink and signatures on documents we receive,” she says.

According to Prof Bouvard, GGSB and other business schools are spending increasing amounts of time and resources checking the authenticity of applicants’ degree certificates and, in the case of overseas students, their true ability to understand and use English. GGSB recently expelled a Chinese student because he had used a proxy to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language.