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As Pakistan's Election Commission began its first hearings into parliamentarians' fake degrees last week some feared the scandal had been pushed out of the limelight by the devastating floods. Nonetheless, the degree debacle is straining the credibility of the country's higher education and election systems.

The commission in Cameroon responsible for assessing higher education qualifications issued abroad has exposed more than 300 cases of fraudulent diplomas, reported Quotidien Mutations info of Yaoundé.

Universities in two East African countries, Kenya and Tanzania, have come under fire for prolifically awarding honorary degrees – in some cases allegedly for money and in others in return for influence.

New international guidelines and a voluntary code on research integrity are being drawn up as a result of consultations at the Second World Conference on Scientific Integrity held in Singapore in July. The initiative is intended to combat rising incidences of scientific fraud, plagiarism and other research falsification and serve as a "guide for professionally responsible research practices throughout the world".

A new government report on recruiting techniques in the for-profit higher education industry finds instances of college officials urging applicants to invent children and to hide their savings as a way to leverage more federal aid.

The frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be here at the testing center of the University of Central Florida. As the eternal temptation of students to cheat has gone high-tech – not just on exams, but also by cutting and pasting from the Internet and sharing of homework online like music files – educators have responded with their own efforts to crack down.

Some 70.5% of French pupils admit to having cheated in school, according to a study on exam fraud conducted among 1,815 students in French multidisciplinary universities.