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Amid a period of growth for the higher and further education sectors, with some institutions investing millions of pounds in new building projects and developments, officers want to highlight how organizations can be left vulnerable to the risk of money laundering, fraud, and cybercrime. Institutions also have a duty to ensure that workers in the supply chain are not being exploited as victims of human trafficking.

Elite universities in the United States and the United Kingdom have been investing endowment funds offshore in order to pay little or no tax, according to details revealed in the so-called Paradise Papers. According to the student run Fossil Free Pitt Coalition “We are concerned about the lack of transparency, as two-thirds of the endowment is just a mystery to us. We are suspicious about where that huge segment of the endowment is going.” An emeritus professor in accounting at the University of Essex, told the newspaper that UK universities should be more transparent about their investment decisions, since they are public institutions that receive public money, including from the European Union.

Oxford University has been urged in an open letter to review its decision to accept £75m from Britain’s richest man to build the Blavatnik School of Government. The letter also urges the university to carry out urgent “transparency and procedural reforms” with regard to foreign donations.

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.

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.

Revealed: university representatives met with daughter of Chinese prime minister to win donation university officials later claimed had "no link" to Chinese government.

It is claimed that a "slow corruption" is being installed as universities are struggling for funds. Degrees are for sale and in one university a professor at a former polytechnic was found to have ordered his staff to "minimise" the number of failing students by marking up those at risk of failing because there has been a drop in applications.