Le Conseil interuniversitaire de l'Afrique de l'Est (IUCEA) est sur le point de développer un système destiné à normaliser les diplômes proposés par les universités locales. Selon le secrétaire de direction du Conseil, la plupart des Kényans souhaitent intégrer une université en Ouganda du fait de coûts d'inscription inférieurs à ceux de leurs universités locales. Cependant, ils ne s'assurent pas de la conformité de la qualité de l'enseignement dispensé par les universités ougandaises aux normes en vigueur.

According to an opposition leader, the businessman Agarwal's pledge last week of $1-billion to set up Vedanta University, in the South Indian state of Orissa, is a gimmick to divert attention from his corrupt mining deal with the state's government. The $1-billion pledge, which if realized would be the largest gift ever made to a higher-education institution, is intended to create a multidisciplinary elite university for 100,000 students that would open in 2008.

Academics and students around the world at this very second are being subjected to infringements of their professional and human rights, and most of these violations are going unnoticed. Violations of this kind are not limited to countries with poor human rights records. On the contrary, in the post 9/11 world even the most transparent democracies are showing signs that are a cause for concern. Many institutions and academics in the West are subject to an increasingly sophisticated infrastructure of surveillance, intervention and control.

"Degree mills" are impeding the efforts to assure quality in higher education—a significant national issue for some time and now an international concern. In response, the US-based Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) recently joined with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to bring together an informal group of higher education and quality assurance/accreditation leaders to focus on degree mills. Issues on the traits and the perils of degree mills, and on the national and international policies to curb that phenomenon will be discussed.

The Ministry of National Education of Indonesia proposed a bill to further deregulate the Nation's universities. But the privatization of leading universities will lead, according to the Indonesia Corruption Watch, to the exclusion of the children from less well-off families. The high costs of university entrance and passage in the way have indeed tended to either reduce or eliminate students from the poorer provinces of Indonesia. Major corruption cases break out in Indonesia on a regular basis and there is strong evidence that higher university tuition fees increased corruption in the sector.

People in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have been found buying fake degrees of all sorts from diploma mills and other bogus universities. Those universities have no physical existence and operate only through websites. Most diploma mills are operating from Britain or United States where academic standards are presumed to be very high. Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigations compiled a list of over 10,000 persons who obtained fake degrees from diploma mills in USA. A significant number of them are from South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. Currently, there are about 80 notorious diploma mills that operate from the United States and the UK.

In 2002, the Liberian embassy's deputy chief of mission began his fraudulent transactions with American owners of St Regis diploma mill. They agreed to sell Liberian university accreditation to "St Regis University" for $2,250. They then decide to create two other diploma mills: Robertstown and James Monroe. By the end of 2003, Liberian officials under their sway included senior diplomats in at least two embassies, a minister of justice, a foreign minister, two successive directors of Liberia's National Commission for Higher Education, and a number of other diplomats and government officials, including several at the Ministry of Education. The United States Secret Service finally unveiled their embezzlement.

Last week, the National Universities Commission (NUC) announced the existence of 33 illegal universities in the country. In May, the NUC had earlier declared that sixteen out of these institutions were illegal and warned Nigerians against patronizing them. Also declared illegal were unlicensed satellite campuses, outreach campuses and study centers countrywide. The universities' regulatory body also stated that it had not approved any offshore universities to operate in the country. The Commission said that five owners of such institutions had been arrested and were being prosecuted to dissuade others.

From 1995 to 2001, Nigerian degree mills produced annually about 15 percent of total university graduates in the country. In the past 9 years, a flurry of activity has been directed at eradicating the degree mills. In 1999, the National Council on Education (NUC) directed the closure of all local and foreign satellite campuses. It also partnered with the Department of State Services (Nigeria's secret service) in locating, arresting, and prosecuting operators of unapproved universities and satellite campuses. Finally, it directed approved universities to make full disclosure of their programs, which have been listed in the Directory of Approved Programmes in the Nigerian University System.

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan has asked all the universities of the country to provide a digital or computerised copy of the theses submitted by the students doing M Phil or PhD, so that it can upload all the theses on its website and an automatic check established. According to sources HEC have asked universities managements to warn postgraduate students that plagiarism would result in their degrees being cancelled. More than 5,000 people have been awarded PhD degree from various universities of the country out of which 1,000 have been uploaded on HEC website.