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Angola's higher education and science minister has denounced officials’ fraudulent malpractice in student university entrance processes. The former dean of the medical faculty and associate professor at Katyavala Bwila University, Benguela, said the use of fraud, cronyism, and nepotism for a student to gain a place at university was a “widespread evil” which all of society should fight against. The minister said it was “unacceptable that those students with the best results are not selected for university entrance because of the negative influences of a number of senior university managers”.

Tajikistan has been hit by a huge fake dissertation scandal that reaches all the way up to the highest echelons of government. Russian networking community Dissernet (in Russian) has revealed that more than 25 doctoral dissertations from Tajikistan defended between 2004 and 2015 contained significant elements of plagiarism. Included in the blacklist are high-ranking government figures such as the first deputy prime minister who is a close relative of the country’s longstanding president.

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.

Education Minister this morning made her first pretrial appearance in the Windhoek High Court in the case in which she is facing a charge of corruption. She is due to be prosecuted on allegations that she corruptly used her office as Hardap governor in December 2014 to place the names of two of her family members on a list of beneficiaries for the mass housing development programme at Mariental.

An awareness campaign against widespread corruption in universities, which includes bribery by students to get good results, false diplomas and sex to gain promotion, has been launched by CONAC, the national anti-corruption commission. According to a source “The main kind of corruption here is the sale of grades by certain teachers. Students whose work is bad get teachers or education officials to improve their grades”. CONAC found instances of nepotism, counterfeiting of results, false diplomas, promotions in return for sex, and abuse of power.

The rector of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa university is under investigation for allegedly helping the son of a former minister get a research position at the institute. The news came two days after seven university teachers were arrested by Florence finance police in relation to a probe into the alleged rigging of exams to qualify as lecturers. Another 22 people have been barred from holding academic positions for 12 months in relation to the probe and 59 people are under investigation in total. The probe was triggered by an alleged attempt by some teachers to persuade a researcher who was a candidate in an exam to qualify as a tax-law teacher to withdraw the bid in favour of a less qualified candidate.