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A good grade on the new SAT-style exams in Russia costs about 40,000 rubles. Could reform and crackdowns on corruption bring education back from the brink?

Foreign students are attempting to bluff their way into British universities by parroting education websites in their applications, research suggests.

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 level of corruption in Russian universities is steadily growing despite the efforts of local authorities to eradicate it. According to rough estimates, bribes paid for admission to Russian universities in 2009 totalled $1 billion. This is 40% more than in 2007, with the average bribe rocketing to five times higher in just the last two years.

Students born, raised and educated in China are using fake foreign passports to get into top universities, which have higher entrance standards for domestic candidates, according to state media.

Disgruntled parents in Zhejiang have complained to provincial education authorities over a policy that gave 19 children of government officials and teachers special treatment in college entrance examinations. These Practices are often linked to abuse of power and corruption, showed the vulnerability of the education system.

The Boarding Schools Association (BSA) chairman Melvyn Roffe has declared that thousands of vulnerable children are being denied the chance to go to a boarding school because of ignorance and prejudice in local councils. He has also stated that there are hundreds of children whose life would be transformed by having a place in one of those schools, but because of bureaucratic procedures they are condemned to an ever diminishing circle of failure.

In line with the second MDG of achieving universal primary education by ensuring that all girls and boys complete a full course of primary schooling, moral values and ethics need to be inducted in the education system aside practical skills. Though some people have argued that corruption is as old as mankind, it is mankind that can avert the situation through structuring curricular whose aim should be producing morally upright citizens who abhor corruption.

Eight parents and teachers who used hi-tech equipment to help children cheat in Chinese college entrance exams have been sent to prison. They were given sentences of six months to three years after being found guilty of using mobile phones, tiny earpieces or mini scanners in order to obtain state secrets.

The University of Cauca uncovered what could be trickery in entrance exams to this year's first semester. It stated that the scores of 32 students in both assertive and non-assertive questions closely coincided. Among the doubtful candidates, 18 got into medicine, 4 into nursing, 2 into physiotherapy, and 2 into civil engineering.