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The boss of the Education Institute at the Royal Children’s Hospital has quit in the wake of evidence given during an anti-corruption inquiry. The RCH told the Herald Sun that it appeared to have been caught up in what is alleged to have been misuse of public funds distributed to various organisations via a network of “banker schools”.

Australian universities are paying more than an estimated $250 million each year to unregulated middlemen for the recruitment of international students, despite widespread acknowledgement that a number of these agents are corrupt and deal in fraudulent documents.

A NSW government minister has launched a blistering attack on the federal government's administration of the scandal-ridden private vocational education sector. The sector has been plagued by allegations of dodgy private providers recruiting tens of thousands of students through free laptops and targeting illiterate, disabled students to sign them up to tens of thousands of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded student debt through the federal government's HECS-style VET-FEE help program.

A Sydney businessman accused of ripping off foreign students is continuing to run his operation despite facing 22 charges of fraud and misconduct. According to a former employee, the company, posing as the client, sets up fake email accounts to try and obtain visas, in direct infringement of The Migration Act.

Education Minister wants to make universities more accountable for how they spend their money after it was revealed billions of dollars a year are redirected from teaching to research. A report by the Grattan Institute found that universities report the $26 billion they spend each year in an "opaque" way, concluding: "Australia needs a more transparent system for reporting how universities spend their money."

Several universities are being threatened with tough penalties for allegedly providing data that would artificially boost their performance on prestigious research rankings used to allocate government funding. The Australian Research Council has written stern letters to several universities warning them they face punishments for providing misleading data for their research excellence assessments, including prosecution under Commonwealth law.

The medical faculty at the University of Sydney will review one of its study units after an academic scandal which involved students falsifying records and interviewing dead patients. A spokeswoman for the university announced it would review its year-long Integrated Population Medicine (IPM), after it was revealed students had falsified reports that were supposed to document the experience of patients living with chronic diseases.

Several Sydney universities caught up in a cheating scandal that includes students using essay writing services say they are responding and cracking down on the new cheating method. The vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney said he would personally head a taskforce to investigate academic misconduct in the wake of new methods of cheating.

Australia has been gripped by a national debate over how to fund our university education. But perhaps there's a more important question: what is it worth? A Four Corners investigation has unearthed alarming new evidence of a decline in academic standards at institutions around the country. Lecturers and tutors are grappling with a tide of academic misconduct and pressure from faculty managers to pass weak students. Many say commercial imperatives are overtaking academic rigour.

The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) says that universities in NSW should consider a range of key initiatives including separating the academic compliance and incentive functions of their international student offices to reduce the risk of corruption.