In the media

“Academic misconduct is a mega-problem rippling across the globe,” says a professor of education at Calgary. 1340 incidents of cheating were found at the University of Waterloo up to August 2020, an increase of 146% on the previous year, while at the University Calgary cheating had increased by 269%. According to the Quality Assurance Agency in the UK, COVID-19 had accelerated the growth of contract cheating with 904 essays mills providing ghost-written texts known to be operating.

According to a report by Guinea's school and A-SEG student association, 1,500 incidents of academic fraud have been found, particularly during national examinations in 2020. Students participated in the exams on the basis of their own contributions and without financial support from the Ministry of Education. From Conakry to N'Zérékoré the supervision of the examinations has been ensured by young students or classmates.

The Austrian minister of labour resigned from her cabinet post after allegations that her university work was fraudulent. An expert in academic fraud detection reported that her 2006 master’s thesis displayed “plagiarism, incorrect quotations and lack of knowledge of the German language”. More than a fifth of the text in the thesis she submitted last May at the Technical University of Bratislava, had been taken from other sources without quotes, including an article in Forbes magazine.

A significant number of faculty members are being accused of securing their academic promotions through predatory publications and other sub-standard means. To combat this unethical practice, the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) issued a new Harmonised Standard for Academic Staff Promotion in Public Universities in October 2020. The MoSHE says the safest way to avoid predatory publications is for academics to submit manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals indexed by databases such as Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed.

Following an increase in breaches of academic integrity during the remote fall term, two teaching assistants (TAs) are asking Queen’s University to take action against academic misconduct. In grading final assignments using Turnitin, they found that four of her five plagiarism cases had copy rates of 50 and 60 per cent. When reporting the cases of plagiarism, the administration claimed the process was ‘’intense’ while the professor of the course suggested marking the assignment with a 20 per cent grade deduction because they “didn’t want to make this misconduct a big deal.”

The rampant corruption and nepotism in appointing and promoting teachers at public universities of the country are alarming. Vice-chancellors or influential teachers use their political power to put pressure on selection committees and unions for the appointment of candidates of their choice as teachers, in violation of established standards, rules and regulations. To promote teachers based on merit at the 46 public universities, UGC submitted a draft policy to the education ministry spelling out the minimum qualifications for the appointment and promotion of public university teachers.

Too many corrupt professors have infiltrated the idyllic garden of erudition. The University of Dhaka syndicate has penalized with demotion three teachers found guilty of plagiarism. A recent University Grants Commission investigation found the vice-chancellor of Rajshahi University and other officials guilty of manipulating the recruitment process in order to recruit 30 unqualified family members into teaching positions.

The World Bank has suspended the first tranche of $100 million in a programme to fund free schools in DR Congo after a November report found fake invoices, lists of teachers filled with fake names at non-existent schools, and alleged embezzlement of 63 billion Congolese francs ($31 million). Two senior officials, including the head of teachers’ payroll, are in pre-trial detention.

A senior teacher in Khon Kaen is accused of being involved in corruption over two government payment schemes, after 38 villagers from Ban Fang district's Ban complained that she had offered them 200 baht each to claim handouts in the We Travel Together tourism stimulus package. When the villagers tried to register for benefits under the "Rao Chana" (We Win) scheme, they found out their identities had already been used to register them for the Kon La Krueng co-payment subsidy scheme.

2,400 students from the colleges of agriculture, environmental and human sciences and engineering have had their marks withheld by UNISA due to concerns over cheating. Over 750 warning letter have been issued and other 200 cases were still outstanding. The consequences of cheating can results in disqualification from future tests or examinations, and exclusions or expulsions from the university.