According to the study, "Fake Universities and Bogus Degrees – Sweden and the World", there has been an increase in the number of job seekers who have been caught trying to pass off fake degrees as genuine, with more than 30 cases reported in the last two years. According to the National Agency for Higher Education, there exists over 800 Web-based fake universities. The study recommends use of a digital database that employers can access to verify an applicant's qualifications, something into which Australia is already looking.

There is a certain frustration at the Mpraeso Secondary School over the administration's attempts to improve accountability and transparency. The implementation of anti-corruption measures through the automation of accounting and administrative procedures as a means of checking and curbing corruption has been bogged by official apathy. The computerization programme, 'School Management Programme', that could have cost the school about ¢5 million a few months ago will now cost the school almost double that amount.

The government has appointed a task force to create a national database of academic qualifications to ensure confidentiality, authenticity, online verification and easy retrieval of degrees.

After years of piling up paper files, the Education Service Commission (ESC) will soon phase out its manual operations and demand that applicants for a job in the sector resort to electronic applications. The move to electronic means will ease the commission's ability to detect forgeries in applications and employment records.

The Sindh education department has decided to recover the funds disbursed in salaries to ghost teachers using its biometric attendance system. Sindh education secretary boasted that Sindh is the only province in the country to have biometric attendance in the education department.

Nigerian academics argue that the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, the sole agency permitted by law to conduct entrance examinations for all tertiary institutions in the country, needs to be decentralised and modernised if it is to stand any hope of dealing with the rampant corruption being uncovered within the body. JAMB has attracted a great deal of media attention over the past few weeks as a result of public hearings into several cases of corruption, particularly relating to the sale of official scratch cards, the biometric cards issued and used by JAMB for on-line registration of all examinations candidates.

The Indian government is planning to digitise academic records as part of a drive against fake degrees and institutions at a time when prominent public figures are being challenged to prove that they are entitled to the degrees and qualifications they claim to have. The National Academic Depository, which will start functioning this year, will include authenticated academic records from 2016 onwards with the government ensuring that all institutions, including school boards, issue digitised certificates with digital signatures from this academic year.