Beirut: Although the Ministry of Education granted an operating license to 29 universities in Lebanon, none of them made the top 500 world rankings based on such indicators as academic quality and research performance.

How could they when Minister Elias Bou Saab cavalierly issued passing affidavits to nearly 148,000 students—all Grade 12 and 9 graduates, as well as all those who completed their course work at various technical schools?

The excuse for this academic sham was a flat refusal by the teachers’ associations—who are part of the Syndicate Coordination Committee (SCC)—to correct exams so long as their demands for pay raises were not voted on by parliament.

On Saturday, Bou Saab—who received an MA in International Relations from Boston University and who is still the Executive Vice President of The American University in Dubai—upset many parents when he declared: “all students will be able to enroll in public or private universities in Lebanon and outside the country and others will be raised to upper classes.”

Concerned educators wondered whether the ill-fated decision was reached to guarantee income to the 28 establishments, given that so many more students could now enroll. The minister’s action underscored the notion that higher education was little more than a mere business and, except for the Lebanese University, the 29th institution that is heavily subsidized, a lucrative one.

The irony of the situation was highlighted in a YouTube parody posted online this weekend that shows a toothless middle aged man interviewed on a Spanish program laughing hysterically at the decision to issue passing certificates. Fake subtitles in Arabic add value to the parody with the hilarious man claiming that he “spent the whole year playing, smoking, going on Facebook, staying up late, [dating] girls,” and otherwise not even bothering to buy assigned books, much less studying. After all that, he maintains, “the education minister … decided to give out passing certificates!”

Watch the video below.

The lampoon, probably the work of one or more gifted Lebanese, was part of the cohort who studied only to share a university classroom with those who did not. Indeed, the best line in the spoof video comes when the fake student says that while he planned “to be a van driver,” since he was sure he would fail, the education minister’s passing certificate persuaded him to “want to become an engineer or a doctor.”

He utters these words in a laughter trance as he repeatedly slams the table. After the talk show host congratulates the “student” for passing, the tape falls silent for a few seconds, before the guest undulates with more laughter as the subtitle says: “I PASSED!” No wonder none of Lebanon’s 29 universities made the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities.