Striking a blow at a Silicon Valley school that attracted foreigners with student visas, federal agents raided Sunnyvale's Herguan University and charged its CEO with visa fraud. The charges come a year after an investigation found Herguan was among a group of Bay Area schools that misrepresented information on federal applications, which allowed them to sponsor overseas students for coveted visas.

The federal government wants to toughen the rules surrounding student visas in the hopes of cracking down on fraud and human smuggling — even though it's not clear just how big a problem this is. There is a proposal to weed out international students who arrive on a student visa as a means of gaining access to Canada's labour market and don't actually enrol in school. There are also concerns that some are ending up at sub-par institutions that ultimately hurt Canada's credibility on the international stage.

Turkey has suspended its recognition of Bulgarian university diplomas. The Turkish University Education Council made this decision on the grounds of high levels of academic forgery, fraud and exam cheating in Bulgaria. Bulgaria's Education Minister has admonished the Bulgarian media for provoking an international scandal, claiming that the problematic diplomas were forged by Turkish citizens.

A number of universities have been falsifying graduate employment data to raise funds and attract students, according to a government investigation. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology announced that 28 universities across the country falsely reported the employment rate for their graduates.

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, in conjunction with the National Universities Commission, NUC, is set to beam its searchlight on corrupt practices in the Nigerian universities over a chain of petitions received by the anti-graft commission. Abuses highlighted include admission processes, conduct of examinations, appointments and promotion of staff, and manipulation and falsification of academic records such as transcripts.

Falsification of report cards to obtain admission into private schools in Kigali is listed as one of the major challenges hampering education quality. Speaking during an education workshop organised by Kigali City Council, an education activist from Power in Education, a local civil society organisation, revealed that a recent survey indicated that over 100 students in various city schools used forged report cards to obtain admission.

The State Board of Higher Education is working to tighten admission policies for international students after an audit found some Chinese student transcripts submitted to Dickinson State University were fakes.

An international forum has developed a code of ethics to apply to education agents and consultants who recruit international students for universities, colleges and schools around the world. The forum says the code and an accompanying statement of principles it has also published will facilitate a common approach and raise ethical standards in the recruitment of international students by education agents and consultants.

Afghan education officials have found themselves embroiled in controversy after a record number of students failed in national university entry exams last week. Afghan students accuse the Higher Education Ministry, which determines university placement, of fraud and discrimination, insisting that as many as 60,000 of them failed purely on the basis of their ethnicity and mother language.

Bar-Ilan University was fined by the Council of Higher Education for admitting students without bachelor's degrees to graduate programs. The panel ruled that Bar-Ilan will be responsible for financing the undergraduate degrees of students who were enrolled in violation of the Council of Higher Education's guidelines.