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Ten out of 15 students in Tanzania admitted they had plagiarized on a regular basis without being noticed by their supervisor. They used fraudulent ways to graduate because professors either did not have the time to critically look at the students work or may notice it was plagiarized but took it as an opportunity to get bribes. According to a lecturer at Tumaini University Makumira, some of his colleagues assign or approve projects that already exist in the institution’s libraries.

Following the suspension of student loans and the imposition of a week-long ultimatum, 15 universities in Tanzania have responded to a ministerial directive to pay back loans issued to them for thousands of so-called ‘ghost’ students. The directive was issued after a recent verification exercise revealed that about 2,192 students receiving loans at 31 universities may not even exist. The universities were given seven days to recover and return the money, estimated to be over TZS3.8 billion (US$1.7 million).

According to the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, curbing corruption in higher learning financing systems is a long term effort that must be given strategic importance and adequate resources. This was said during the Annual Conference and General Meeting of the Association of African Higher Education Agencies in Dar es Salaam. The meeting, which was attended by several higher learning Chief Executive Officers from several African countries, also brought together stakeholders from the education sector.