Search Page

Some language schools are being used to sell false papers, enabling immigrants to obtain student visas. Some are paying up to £600 for fake documents which they use in visa applications to extend their stay. More than half of 83 language colleges recently inspected could be shut down. Up to 50,000 students could be using such scams to stay illegally.

One-third of students admit to cheating at university by copying ideas from books or the internet according to a survey. Based on 1,022 undergraduates at 119 universities and colleges, the study found that one in six students admitted they copied work from friends while 10% said they looked for essays online. Male students were more likely to copy work from their friends (21%) than female students (14%), the study revealed.

Plagiarism could threaten the value of a degree from Oxford University as students increasingly copy large slabs of work from the internet and submit it as their own, the university warns. Many of the plagiarism cases that were referred to the proctor's office involved international students whose first language was not English.

According to Izvestiya Nauki, a corruption-monitoring team at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, university teachers took roughly $923 million in 2004. Some estimates indicate that corruption in universities is rising by 7-10 percent annually. The Highest School of Economics believes one out of ten university lecturers take bribes, and 20% of future students and their parents would be prepared to offer a bribe.

In spring 2004 interviews were conducted with 43 rectors, vice rectors, and administrators at five private universities. A consensus emerged that successful licensing or accreditation applications, with few exceptions, required some form of bribery. Licensing might require a bribe of US$ 200 about two months' salary for a typical academic - while accreditation might call for a 10 or 20 times greater "gratuity."

The Irish government has warned Malaisien education authorities against a private higher education institution located near Kuala Lumpur. According to Irish Ambassador to Malaisie, Irish International University does not offer any courses any classes in Ireland and is not an Irish university.

Almost a third of the polled students in Serbia said that they would bribe somebody if that was the only way to pass an exam, according to a survey conducted by the Students Union of Serbia. 69 % would cheat in their exams if it was certain they would not be caught, while 53 percent said they would not feel bad about the cheating. Seven in ten students said that corruption is involved in enrolment procedures, and 79% heard of cheating in the exams.

A student may learn how to defraud the school's money and yet keep his seat in the Dean's Office. This was the case the Dean of the School of Engineering, recently re-elected to his office in spite of the fact that criminal charges were brought against him for defrauding 140,000 KM of schools' money.