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In India, university fraud is a national sport, practiced at all levels. Beginning with the former prime minister up to the former Delhi justice minister who allegedly fakes his qualification in … law. The increase in fake qualifications is undoubtedly linked to the lack of universities in the country, with some of the harshest selection processes in the world. Leaving the country to study overseas is so expensive that counterfeit diplomas from international universities abound.

KOLHAPUR: Like the grading system in higher education through the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the state government will soon introduce the State Assessment and Accreditation Council (SAAC) system for the assessment and accreditation of the primary and secondary schools across the state, a move welcomed by city-based education activists who say it will bring transparency to the education system and will force schools to improve their infrastructure and education quality

About 3,000 schoolteachers in Bihar, who allegedly used fake degree certificates to get jobs, have resigned till date apprehending legal action. Earlier, the state government admitted that it recruited more than 300,000 contract teachers without verifying their educational and professional degrees. The petitioner of the probe said he has collected documents as evidence through Right to Information queries to prove that thousands of teachers used forged degrees to get jobs.

Universities may attract penalty, including a freeze of grants, if its teachers are found to be guiding more than eight PhD students at any given point in time as part of a drive to plug lacunae in research. The University Grants Commission will ask all universities to have anti-plagiarism software to ensure that the thesis papers reflect genuine research. The step assumes significance against the backdrop of some agencies offering their services to research scholars to draft theses for them for a fee.

Information related to students, teachers and schools will be a click away, from this academic year. The information will soon be available on a website hosted by the National Informatics Centre. The student database will help teachers and parents concentrate on learning levels. The online database will also be used to arrest the drop-out rate among students.

A preliminary probe conducted by the Lucknow University (LU), during the ongoing undergraduate examination at an associated college, evoked suspicion of large scale use of unfair means at the college. In the observation report submitted to the chief proctor by the anti-copying squad, the self-financed college has been suspected of carrying on activities of mass cheating.

The Medical Council of India has asked state counsels to investigate the problem of “ghost” teachers in medical colleges following the discovery of more than 400 fake teachers in four colleges in three states. These “ghost teachers” are registered as faculty members drawing a hefty salary, but have never taken a single class. Most of them run private clinics, and only attend the college when there is an impending medical inspection.

India's University Grants Commission has again cautioned universities against the awarding of degrees in violation of provisions, following the recent controversy surrounding the four-year undergraduate programme of Delhi University.

A ruling by India's Supreme Court that appointments for highly specialised teaching positions in medical colleges cannot be subject to affirmative action caste-based quotas has led to a political uproar that has disrupted the current session of parliament, where a number of higher education bills are pending. The issue of caste reservations is highly political, with elections due in five states and national elections scheduled for 2013.

The medical education sector in the state has turned out to be a platform for corruption. Critics have urged the government to ensure that the MBBS seats are allotted to those who have cleared the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET). They also urged the state government to frame a common policy on medical education.