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A recent report by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has unearthed the rot in many of Nigeria’s higher institutions, highlighting an intricate collusion among staff, students and other stakeholders. In the report titled, ‘Stealing the future: How federal universities in Nigeria have been stripped apart by corruption’, SERAP claimed that many allegations of corruption in federal universities – such as unfair allocation of grades; contract inflation; truncation of staff’s salary on the payroll; employment of unqualified staff; examination malpractice; sexual harassment; and issuance of results for expelled student to graduate have not been thoroughly investigated.

In a surprise move, the president of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany this week announced plans to overhaul controversial contracts governing the use of a €150 million donation from a philanthropic foundation. Critics have charged that the agreement gives the donor too much control over publishing decisions and faculty appointments at the school’s Institute of Molecular Biology, which the foundation helped create in 2009. The move, which could eventually influence similar funding arrangements at other German universities, only partly satisfies critics. They are pushing for greater transparency from universities and donors.

Federal prosecutors are investigating an agreement between a Brazilian Federal University and a state-controlled oil company, which allegedly subcontracted tenured staff meant to work solely for the university via an academic foundation. However, after the investigation appeared to show widespread irregularities and fraud, higher education groups in Brazil have denied that there is insufficient transparency in the relationships between public universities and private companies.

The Exam Ethics Project (EEP), an NGO fighting against examination malpractices, has in the last few years released figures either as profit made from examination malpractice business or those (students, invigilators etc) sacked for engaging in examination malpractice.

A majority of students believe that there is a lot of corruption at the University of Banja Luka, according to a study by Transparency International.