“Contract cheating” is becoming commonplace in many Australian universities, with a range of easily accessed services offering to complete assignments or sit an exam for money. Some services even offer the students the possibility of choosing the type of grade, the price is adjusted according to the grade they wish to obtain. The Government submitted new legislation and the person providing cheating services to students could face two years in jail and a $210,000 fine.

The president of the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) along with the former Minister of Education are being investigated for corruption matters. During a previous Public Administration and Appreciation Committee (PAAC) sitting, the CMU president admitted that over $600,000 were paid towards a yacht party for the minister of education. According to the documents, the east Kingston-based university paid two companies a total of $674,930 to rent and decorate the yacht.

The Institute of Business Economics’ rector and deputy are charged with fraud, forging of documents and their sale, commercial bribery, and mediation. One of the Institute applicants said that the admissions office offered her to pay 450 thousand rubles ($7,054) for three years of study. The fact that the university was deprived of its license two years earlier did not prevent the rector from concluding contracts with candidates for paid higher education.

The Higher Attestation Commission (VAK) refused to hear the results on academic integrity violations in academic dissertations from the Commission to Combat the Falsification of Scholarly Research, which operates within the Russian Academy of Science (RAN). The head of VAK refused to review a plagiarized dissertation and to let RAN academics into the hearing room. Moreover, VAK excluded academics who have attempted to take a stand against falsified dissertations.

A foreign graduate’s research papers were published under the name of his supervisor at the University of Putrajaya. The Ministry of Education has opened an investigation on this matter, encouraging other students who have been “robbed” to lodge a complaint with the ministry.

The number of students disciplined for academic misconduct at the University of Auckland rose to 195 last year, from 187 the year before. Cheating incidents reported have highlighted concerns about the reuse of assignments and the fact that ghostwriters undermine school integrity. According to the Tertiary Education Union president, university bosses should support teaching staff to implement the best anti-cheating measures such as changing assignments frequently and requiring students to submit their work through detection service Turnitin.

Unethical practices leading to ‘pay and publish trash’ culture is a growing problem in India. One of the research papers authored by two of the university’s professors and a research scholar was retracted due to concerns about the validity of results. According to the University Grants Commission (UGC), the percentage of research articles published in predatory journals is high. So, in order to “identify, continuously monitor and maintain UGC-CARE Reference List of Quality Journals across disciplines” a Consortium of Academic and Research Ethics was launched.

According to a professor from the National Universities Commission, 60% of essays by final-year undergraduates contained plagiarism, at masters’ level it was between 15-20% and at PhD level about 8% contained plagiarism. The vice-chancellor of Delta State University announced that in an attempt to instill academic discipline and honesty, the institution had sanctioned more than 15 lecturers for various forms of publication-related plagiarism. According to a source at the university, such sanctions involved demotions and no promotions for periods between three and five years.

The quality of university education in Nigeria declines because politicians refuse to pay adequate attention to education. According to the president of the Academic Staff Union, most universities are “caricatures”, any person can teach and to be academic you only need some temperament. No serious academic work can be done and universities “produce ill-equipped graduates and they go to one political heavyweight, who gives them a letter and they are employed as teachers in the universities”.