The Uganda government was last evening left searching for alternative sources of funding following the withdrawal of support to the education sector by one of its key donors. The Dutch government announced it was withdrawing funding to a tune of nearly Shs50b (14 million Euro), citing concerns over persistent corruption, poor public financial management and poor standards.

Private and public universities in South Korea have engaged in creative accounting practices resulting in excessive hikes in tuition fees, the state audit agency said. Wrapping up an investigation into 35 randomly chosen universities, including nine public institutions, the Board of Audit and Inspection said the institutions had habitually manipulated their accounting books over the past five years to justify steep rises in tuition expenses.

Swaziland's Minister of Finance has told the Senate that each year the country loses nearly double the annual social services budget to corruption. He estimated that about US$10.6 million a month was disappearing – amounting to about US$128 million annually - while the government's 2010/11 budget allocated US$75 million to social services, including US$24.2 million for education.

The Department of Justice and four states filed a multibillion-dollar fraud suit against the Education Management Corporation, the nation's second-largest for-profit college company, charging that it was not eligible for the $11 billion in state and federal financial aid it had received from July 2003 through June 2011.

A third of French universities are "illegally" charging students for services that should be covered by statutory fees, claims Unef, France's biggest student union.

In a bid to encourage transparency and stamp out corruption and fraud in universities, India's education ministry is preparing guidelines that will for the first time force private higher education institutions to make their accounts public.

Unauthorized payments of allowances, bonuses and enhanced pensions for some university staff over several years have been revealed in a report from Ireland's public spending watchdog, the Comptroller and Auditor General.

A new government report on recruiting techniques in the for-profit higher education industry finds instances of college officials urging applicants to invent children and to hide their savings as a way to leverage more federal aid.

The global financial crisis has catalyzed increasing transparency and accountability regarding public finances, say aid experts, which has helped open up disclosures on aid-giving.

Colleges, universities and other academic organizations received just shy of $2 billion in grants directed to them by individual members of Congress in the 2010 fiscal year, an Inside Higher Ed analysis shows. Earmarks are commonly derided as "pork barrel spending" because they are seen as attempts by legislators to keep their constituents happy (and voting for them).