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Educating school children and young adults on the subject of corruption on the Seychelles’ three main islands is the aim of a joint project between Transparency Initiative Seychelles (TIS) and the Anti-Corruption Commission Seychelles (ACCS). Other than educating students and pupils, key activities under the project consist of revising the existing Anti-Corruption Act, reinforcing the capacity of the Transparency Initiatives Seychelles and to improve the latter’s advocacy through technical assistance and equipment.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan last week ordered the removal of a number of university vice-chancellors because they were appointed in violation of the merit-based system. In stern remarks on 22 April over the appointment of vice-chancellors in Punjab province, Pakistan’s Chief Justice said “The Supreme Court cannot tolerate any appointment without transparency as the state of education in the province is in complete disarray,” and that the appointments were not the most senior professors but had close links with government circles.

The quality of Nigerian university graduates continues to be a source of concern with many of the country’s academics and stakeholders pointing to the prevalence of plagiarism and academic dishonesty in universities as a contributing factor. Last month a specialist in development economics was reported to have said that 70% of graduates churned out in recent times by Nigerian universities and other higher institutions of learning were “unemployable”.

The Association of African Universities (AAU) has identified corruption and threats to officials of accreditation bodies as some of the issues affecting the quality of some higher education institutions across the continent. “Because of corruption, some universities that are owned by ‘the rich and famous’ as well as politicians just get opened without the minimum requirements. Some accreditation bodies also face threats if they refuse to open unbefitting institutions,”. The AAU is preparing to implement the regional recognition of higher education qualifications across Africa .

A new report by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has revealed how most allegations of corruption in federal universities have neither been thoroughly investigated nor punished. The report titled: ‘Stealing the future: How federal universities in Nigeria have been stripped apart by corruption’ said: “Impunity for corruption in the university system has negatively affected the governance of federal universities and the quality of education received by the students.”

The teacher-student ratio, a measure of quality of education, which is already abysmal at 1:21, is set to worsen after the discovery that nearly a tenth of teachers employed in higher education turned out to be ghost teachers. Around 130,000 teachers were found to be fake. India has about 1.4 million teachers in colleges and universities. While the good news is that this will lead to a focus on improving the quality of teaching, the bad news is that the country has just found out that understaffing in higher education institutes is far greater than what has been estimated so far.

Member of the committee on education and scientific research of the House of Representatives called for installing cameras in all examination halls at Egyptian universities to prevent cheating and lack of discipline. He will send the proposal to the Ministry of Higher Education as cameras will prevent and detect the growing incidents of mass copying by students and reveal any problem that would happen between students and monitors in the exam. This move is part of Egypt’s efforts to enhance the quality of the country’s university education and to deter churning out low quality graduates especially since the country’s examination system has been plagued by cheating over the recent years especially in high schools.