A sign of the times, cheating comes down to glancing at your smartphone during an exam, or copy-pasting whole sections of texts found on the Internet. Attempts to cheat on final exams increased by 10% in 2014, when compared to 2013, according to National Education Ministry statistics.

Plagiarism is increasing at the secondary school level, according to the numbers revealed by the Inter-academic Commission of Ile-de-France. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of cases of plagiarism and copying reported to the disciplinary commissions in Ile-de-France doubled, increasing from 24 to 47. They represented last year 25% of the 188 cases of fraud on exams reported to disciplinary commissions.

One in seven Russian students readily admits to cheating in university exams and one in 25 students also reports having paid for someone else to write at least one mid-term or final-year paper, according to the annual Monitoring of Education Markets and Organizations Project (Memo), which received responses from almost 3,000 Russian undergraduates in 2013.

Thousands of students have signed up to 'unlawful' contracts that allow universities to increase tuition fees arbitrarily or discontinue their course, an investigation has alleged. University students can have their fees increased or their degree course altered on a whim as a result of unfair contract terms. A consumer lobby group said one in five universities were using unlawful contract terms to give them unlimited power to change courses once students have enrolled.

It was the Director of the University of Law in Le Havre who drew this violation to the attention of the Public Prosecutor. Cheating on an exam is punished by a maximum sentence of 3 years imprisonment and a fine of 9000 Euros.

Many of the UK’s leading universities are refusing to spell out just how they are spending their students’ £9,000 (US$13,600) a year tuition fees. The influential think-tank, the Higher Education Policy Institute, invited a range of institutions to explain how they were spending the money - but the majority, including almost all the of the country’s most select universities, declined to reply.

A warning by German anti-corruption organisation Transparency International that links between higher education and business are becoming increasingly obscure has sparked an open debate. "We are observing corporate interests increasingly dominating teaching and research to a large extent,” said Director of Transparency International Germany.

A National Forum on the fight against corruption was organized in Tirana today bringing together cabinet ministers, international organizations, civil servants, civil society and media.The Government of Albania considers transparency and accountability, the cornerstone of the fight against corruption and it is committed to put its fight within the context of modernizing public services delivery.

Insisting that the government must scrap its plan for graduates to take external, state-supervised exams, protesting students have rejected the Education Ministry's proposed compromise. Macedonian students who last week staged a mass protest against plans for "external testing" have rejected the latest concessions of the Education Minister.

Denouncing the reluctance of universities to fight plagiarism, French teachers and researchers have launched a petition. They believe it is urgent to act in order to protect the legitimacy of degrees.