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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.

A school administrative staff has been jailed for 8 months at Eastern Magistracy for accepting a $100,000 loan from a cleaning contractor for renewing service contracts of the school for longer terms without consent of the school. The defendant must pay $15,600 in restitution to the school.

While the liberal studies subject will be introduced in senior secondary education in 2009, the ICAC has launched Hong Kong's first audio-visual liberal studies teaching package to promote moral education among secondary school students.

The Ministry of education will probe private schools over irregularities in the fight against corruption. The education minister and the Board of audit and inspection will soon jointly select private schools suspected of mismanaging their schools. They will only investigate those which are suspected of mismanagement and corruption, rather than doing random investigation.

An increasing number of college students in China are hiring surrogates to take English-language examinations for them. The business of hiring a "gunman" is growing at an unprecedented rate on campuses. In order to graduate from a bachelor's program, all students are required to pass English proficiency exams know as the College English Test Level 4. Fees for a pass in the CET-4 are around US$120. Many of the ads are placed by agencies which also propose tests such as TOEFL and IELTS, for which agencies charge as much as $1,500 for a pass.

Nearly 50 English language teachers from Canada have been arrested on suspicion of working illegally or having fraudulent qualifications. Officials put the number of English teachers working legally in South Korea at 7,800. The number of those working without the necessary documentation is believed to be around 20,000. An increase in the number or private schools is blamed for the rise in illegal workers.

Beijing municipality is revising the existing norms on professional ethics for the primary and middle school teachers. The revision will involve setting up of a series of systems concerning the post responsibility, and supervision and punishment of teachers in implementing the norms of the professional ethics. Unqualified teachers will be removed from the profession.

The Irish government has warned Malaisien education authorities against a private higher education institution located near Kuala Lumpur. According to Irish Ambassador to Malaisie, Irish International University does not offer any courses any classes in Ireland and is not an Irish university.

Corruption is today a big problem in Kazakhstan's higher education sector. Lecturers often collude, i.e. if one teacher pass a student as a favour for one colleague, then he/she can count on assistance from the colleague if he/she needs to pass one of his/her students. In exams, some lecturers ask very difficult, even nonsensical questions making the tests impossible to pass without coming to an "arrangement". Also falsification of records happens after request from heads of departments, deans of faculties etc.

The need to sell more courses to foreign students is placing universities' reputations at risk and education is slowly being privatised. To replace the missing income due to fall in government funds, universities allow private students, particularly from overseas to buy university places. The fees overseas students pay can represent up to two-fifths of the budget of universities.