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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.

The National Council for Higher Education has ordered the closure of Luweero University and Central Buganda University (CBU). The council also says Namasagali and Fairland Universities have up to December to improve their facilities or face closure. The council's deputy executive director said they had written to the Inspector General of Police to effect the closure. "Luweero University and CBU are illegal and any student who goes there does so at his or her own risk. The council does not recognise them as universities and we have requested the Police to close them down." Both Luweero and CBU have over 2,000 students studying Business Administration, Social Work and Social Administration as well as Computer Science.

In line with the second MDG of achieving universal primary education by ensuring that all girls and boys complete a full course of primary schooling, moral values and ethics need to be inducted in the education system aside practical skills. Though some people have argued that corruption is as old as mankind, it is mankind that can avert the situation through structuring curricular whose aim should be producing morally upright citizens who abhor corruption.

Two of the most prestigious high school institutions are been blame of sending home earlier the children in order to save substantial utilities and teacher's allowances, of detaining children at school in holydays and of asking parents to pay fees twice in the same term.

The President has denied the claim of schools to charge monetary lunch fee for pupils under the Universal Primary Education (UPE), arguing that this program was conceived for poor families that could not afford additional fees. Besides, he declared that the pay of un-necessary amounts of money will create additional barriers to the free UPE as the ones that already exist; expensive uniforms, books, tours and others items.

The Ministry of Education has said it is overwhelmed by the number of teachers who gained employment using forged documents. The Director of Basic Education said that a survey found that all districts in Eastern Uganda have several cases of forgeries. The same has been discovered in the Central region as investigations continue in other parts of the country.

In the past, teachers were heroes and their profession was highly respected. But over the years, things have changed and the profession has become the last career resort for many students. The nation needs to go back to the drawing board in the training and recruitment of teachers, putting emphasis on ethics and professionalism.

Makerere University has established a new policy that provides for the sacking of lecturers over drunkenness, writes Francis Kagolo for The New Vision. The policy, which seeks to boost academic standards, also requires lecturers to teach for a minimum of 10 hours a week and provide evidence that they carry out research.

The Uganda government was last evening left searching for alternative sources of funding following the withdrawal of support to the education sector by one of its key donors. The Dutch government announced it was withdrawing funding to a tune of nearly Shs50b (14 million Euro), citing concerns over persistent corruption, poor public financial management and poor standards.

The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) recently pointed out that teacher absenteeism was one of the reasons for high failure rates in the Primary Leaving Examinations. However further researches have confirmed that the least paid teacher are not the ones who absent themselves the most. In fact are the high paid teachers the ones that spend the school time in the market places.