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A university has excluded 50 foreign students it believes used forged certificates to enhance their applications. It said it regretted having to exclude the students because many of them appeared to be victims of bogus "agents", based either in China or Britain (49 students came from China and one from Taiwan), who were paid to submit applications, including supporting documents, on their behalf. The forgeries, mainly certificates for English language qualifications or degrees awarded by other universities, are of such high quality that they could not have been detected by the usual checks carried out by admissions officers. The university is introducing a number of changes to its admissions procedures, one of which will be to draw up and publish on its website a list of approved agents.

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.

Fake degrees from every university in Wales are being sold on the internet for less than £40 a go, a Wales on Sunday investigation has found. The website, called the Fake Certificate Factory, offers degrees from all of Wales' top universities – including Cardiff, Swansea, Glamorgan, Aberystwyth and Bangor. Wales on Sunday was able to buy a degree in English literature bearing the crest of Cardiff University for just £39.95, which we received the next day by post. And for an extra £49.95 we were offered a fake transcript, which provides a detailed breakdown of exam marks supposedly achieved by a student in their final university exams.

The State Security Service (SSS) in Gombe State has discovered that 131 of the 936 Universal Basic Education teachers recruited in the state recently presented fake NCE certificates for employment. A member of the syndicate has confessed that they printed and sold fake NCE certificates issued by the Federal College of Education.

According to a report, directors of the College of Business Studies are embroiled in a syndicate involving fake college transcripts. The college officials provide fake results and transcripts for people intending to travel overseas on the pretext of going for further studies for a fee that some allege is no less than US$2,000.

231 students have obtained degree certificates from a Nairobi university with no official sanction to operate. As a result the certificates risk be useless. The Government did nothing to stop these students pursuing an expensive four-year programme.

According to the study, "Fake Universities and Bogus Degrees – Sweden and the World", there has been an increase in the number of job seekers who have been caught trying to pass off fake degrees as genuine, with more than 30 cases reported in the last two years. According to the National Agency for Higher Education, there exists over 800 Web-based fake universities. The study recommends use of a digital database that employers can access to verify an applicant's qualifications, something into which Australia is already looking.

GetEducated.com, an online degree clearinghouse founded by Phillips in 1989, tracks more than 200 fake online colleges in the USA alone, twice that many abroad. The sale of fake degrees, which at an average cost less than 500 dollars per diploma, has become a multi-million dollar business. A fake degree is a fast, cheap way to quality for high paying employment. Search engines accept listing from colleges without screening for accreditation.