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The need to sell more courses to foreign students is placing universities' reputations at risk and education is slowly being privatised. To replace the missing income due to fall in government funds, universities allow private students, particularly from overseas to buy university places. The fees overseas students pay can represent up to two-fifths of the budget of universities.

According to the study, "Fake Universities and Bogus Degrees – Sweden and the World", there has been an increase in the number of job seekers who have been caught trying to pass off fake degrees as genuine, with more than 30 cases reported in the last two years. According to the National Agency for Higher Education, there exists over 800 Web-based fake universities. The study recommends use of a digital database that employers can access to verify an applicant's qualifications, something into which Australia is already looking.

The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Universities Australia have launched a revision version of a Code for Responsible Research. The purpose of the Code is to guide institutions and researchers in responsible research practices. It embraces topics such as managing data and materials; publication and dissemination of findings; attribution; peer review processes and conflict of interest.

Students from the University of New England may have their degrees stripped from them if they're found guilty of cheating, and may also lose their Australian residency visa. The university has checked more than 200 master projects and found that a significant proportion of fee-paying foreign students had been involved in plagiarism.

In 1999, the Australian Federal Education Minister announced the establishment of the Australian Universities Quality Agency, or AUQA. AUQA has to audit universities as well as non-university institutions. There has been some criticism that AUQA "only looks at processes not outcomes" or that it "looks only at the processes intended to achieve quality and not at the quality itself". In 2006, AUQA commissioned an independent review of its activities.