Search Page

The new Globethics.net University Ranking (GUR) will provide a unique global ranking instrument that places values, ethics, and sustainability as central principles of higher education institutions worldwide. It encompasses a new higher education framework to assess student learning experience, and key stakeholders on integrity, values-driven leadership, and sustainability commitment. Universidad de Santiago, a private institution in Cape Verde, received the highest overall score and gained the best marks for student sustainability and integrity.

The Macao Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating a University of Macao administrative official and two other partners on corruption charges. They helped a contractor bid for the construction of residential colleges and falsified documents. The main suspect received bribes for projects valued at MOP 220 million (US$27.4 million).

Between 1999 and 2006, 242 graduates in the Eastern Shandong province enrolled at universities using other people’s identities and college entrance scores. According to reports, dozens of people have been punished, but under existing laws, students cannot be charged with a crime. The National People’s Congress has received a proposal to criminalize exam fraud, and the Ministry of Education will work with authorities to investigate and hold students accountable.

Officials of a local education center and 200 Macau residents are accused of fraud, document forgery, and computer forgery. The Anti-Corruption Commission reported that residents enrolled in courses subsidized by the Education and Youth Bureau never attended the courses, simply providing their personal identification data to the education center and receiving, in exchange, 2,000 to 2,500 MOPs in cash.

The Hunan University of Technology in central China introduced a new free tool to limit plagiarism on campuses. Students could check their final dissertation with an online database to see how much of each paper’s content is copied from existing publications. A former director of the People’s Liberation Army’s Institute for Disease Control and Prevention plagiarised the work of another Ph.D. student in his final thesis. He was stripped of his doctorate after being found guilty of cheating 12 years after receiving.

Fenglan School violated regulations and used false advertising to enroll more students than its legal capacity. 400 students were found to be “missing” in the local student registration system. According to a student, the school asked them to sign an agreement saying that students would take the standardized exam as a local teenage resident not associated with the school. As a result, the students would not obtain graduation nor take the college admission exam. Some private schools would also bribe local education officials in order to obtain student registration for these unqualified students.

A student at Peking University, China’s top institution, has been allowed to return to the campus after being barred for days for asking questions about campus sexual harassment and rape cases dating back to the 1990s. A student at the School of Foreign Languages at Peking University (PKU), together with seven other students, had lodged a freedom of information request to the university on Shen Yang, a former PKU professor accused of sexual misconduct while at PKU in the 1990s. PKU has said in recent days it will do more to prevent sexual harassment, and that it had “zero tolerance” for violations of students’ rights.

Universities in the United States should close down their Confucius Institutes – teaching and research centres funded directly by the Chinese government – says a report by the National Association of Scholars or NAS. The wide-ranging report includes additional insights on the institutes’ often-secretive operations gleaned from the contracts signed with a dozen US universities, obtained through freedom of information law requests. The report, Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and soft power in American higher education, says unless contracts between US universities and the Hanban can be renegotiated to include more transparency, financial and hiring autonomy for US host universities, academic freedom guarantees and other safeguards, the institutes should be shut down.

A major Chinese education company has paid thousands of dollars in perks or cash to admissions officers at top U.S. universities to help students apply to American schools. According to eight former employees the company’s services didn’t end there. Employees engaged in practices such as writing application essays for students, altering recommendation letters and modifying grades on high school transcripts. The company’s success in gaining access to leading American colleges underscores how people on both sides of the Pacific are hungry to capitalize on Chinese students’ desire to study in the United States.

China is warning its students to steer clear of fake universities. An information website has published a list of 30 such institutions following the annual college entry exam in June. This is the sixth such list in existence. Apparently, faking an entire educational institution isn’t all that difficult. And authorities say they’re becoming harder to spot. No less than a dozen provinces and regions – including Beijing and Shanghai - were mentioned in a list by sdaxue.com, an education information website, according to Xinhua. Some 30 fake universities were mentioned, compounding an already fat list of 400 since 2013.