In the media

The scale of student misconduct in Ukraine has been exposed by a survey of undergraduates that found nearly half have paid bribes and almost all admitted to plagiarism and cheating on exams. Of 600 students surveyed at public universities in Lviv -- a city in the west of Ukraine seen as relatively uncorrupt -- 48 percent had paid bribes. Bribery was far more common for compulsory modules like physical education and workplace safety, and professional programs like business, law and medicine, it found.

Tanzania’s flagship University of Dar es Salaam is under investigation by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee for the mismanagement of university funds. An audit report for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 fiscal years presented to the parliamentary committee earlier this month shows that approximately US$0.5 million was lost on unretired imprest from workers and US$0.2 million on salaries to ghost workers at the university. The committee chairperson suggested that poor financial management at the university was behind the losses.

Universities are being urged to block websites that sell essays, identify cheating "hot spots" and consider publishing data on breaches of academic integrity. As universities grapple with a rise in contract cheating – which involves students outsourcing assessments – Australia's higher education watchdog has unveiled new guidelines to tackle the issue. A recent survey by a University of South Australia associate professor who helped create the guidelines, found that 6 per cent of Australian students engaged in cheating.

Sexual harassment in universities is to be investigated by the National Union of Students, which is conducting the UK’s first survey of staff sexual misconduct in higher education. Students will be asked whether they have experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct by staff and about their experience of reporting this behaviour to their institution. The research project is being carried out by the NUS women’s campaign. Researchers will consider professional boundaries and examine what types of behaviour students are comfortable dealing with from higher education staff.

Nigeria’s Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, or JAMB, is the latest agency to come under the spotlight in what is a national crusade to get rid of corruption in higher education. Past registrars of the agency, which is mandated to hold entrance examinations for all students into tertiary institutions, have been asked to give an account of their stewardship and how they managed the agency’s finances. The probe comes in the wake of revelations that JAMB has managed to remit to the Central Bank of Nigeria an impressive total of US$14 million – the highest annual remittance in the last 40 years.

Ugandan police have made no arrests among the 88 suspects – some of them alleged to be politicians and business people – implicated in the altering or forging of marks at Makerere University, months after university officials reported the offences. Up to 69 degrees are to be cancelled at Makerere University following the findings of a university audit initiated in September. The audit report, which is not available to the public, has revealed that results were altered at senate level after lecturers and college and school registrars made their submissions.

Ohio Auditor’s opponent in the state attorney general’s race said that he should immediately have referred to authorities a whistleblower’s allegations that the state’s then-largest online charter school intentionally inflated attendance figures. The Education Department previously found that the school significantly over-reported its number of full-time-equivalent students and owed the state $60 million for the 2015-2016 school year. Another $19 million penalty was assessed for 2016-2017.

Two people are in hot water after allegedly defrauding the Mpumalanga Department of Education of an estimated R6-million. The two appeared in the Nelspruit Regional Court on Thursday over their alleged involvement in a bogus school-feeding scheme. The Hawks said that in 2011 the accused allegedly submitted several fraudulent invoices to the Department of Education for services never rendered. An employee of the Department of Health allegedly recruited owners of various companies to submit these invoices. The money was allegedly deposited into the said businesses accounts, as well as individual accounts and was subsequently withdrawn and shared amongst the syndicate.

Kenya’s Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) has threatened to go to court if the ministry of education does not take immediate action against the higher learning institutions in the country that are reported to be deducting from their employees’ salaries illegally without remitting deductions to the relevant institutions. Last month the ministry of education released an audit report showing that some public universities in the country were deducting billions of shillings from their employees' salaries and not regularly remitting the money to relevant agencies. The amount the institutions have been deducting illegally from the employees’ salaries is alleged to total approximately US$100 million.

The former chairperson of the University Academic Staff Union (UASU) said that the government seems reluctant to fight corruption in public universities in Kenya which suffer different forms of corruption. For a long time, the Government did not take a keen interest in auditing universities until recently and most universities did not keep proper records of their revenues and expenditure. He added that the lack of accountability among vice-chancellors provided an environment for corruption to take root.