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In a decision intended to curb the widespread sale of seats in professional colleges, India's Supreme Court has ordered that private institutions may no longer demand the "donation" of extra, upfront fees from new students. Medical and engineering colleges now demand upfront payments of tens of thousands of dollars, from students whose test scores do not qualify them for places.

The government has introduced a "Unified State Examination' test in the fight against corruption. The test will weed out weak teacher, improve the quality of instruction in schools and would ease the financial burden on parents of college students.

The system is open to abuse because there is no counterchecking and quality assurance by the Education ministry of exam registration, marking and results. As a result, dishonest heads collected exam fees from students but failed to register them, said the Kenya National Association of Parents.

The West African Examinations Council says it has not recorded any case of examination leakage in five years. It also denied knowledge of the existence of "special exam centers". The centers were allegedly created by some principals and secondary school proprietors for their candidates who are compelled to pay fees higher than the official fees charged by WAEC. The money is reportedly used for lobbying officials of the council to release the examination question papers to the centers ahead of the official time of the examination.

Ad hoc education fees have increased the last years. Many blame inadequate government input. However, even if ad hoc fees are levied, where does the cash end up? In Central China's Hunan Province, it is reported that an annually charged fee of 20 yuan (US$2.20) has been levied on every pupil for six years. The bureau also collected millions more from students for a sports facility fund but the sports centre was never built.

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.

The Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) is accusing some private school operators of charging sky-high prices despite the Ministry of Education approving school fees for them, based on the grade of school. The level of school fees are stated in the constitution and should, according to GNAPS, be respected by both public and private schools.

Fifteen of the 80 students enrolled with the Namibia College of Open Learning will not write their end of year exams after a teacher allegedly misappropriated their examination fees. It is suspected he used the money to settle personal accounts. The students will not be able to sit their exams this year as the fraud was discovered too late.