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Thousands of university students in Uzbekistan are being mobilized to help with the annual cotton harvest and some say they are working under abusive conditions, RFE/RL's Uzbek Service reports. The harvest lasts from the beginning of the academic year in September until late autumn and only students at prestigious universities in Tashkent are exempt from taking part. The use of student and child labor to pick cotton violates state and international labor laws.

Afghan education officials have found themselves embroiled in controversy after a record number of students failed in national university entry exams last week. Afghan students accuse the Higher Education Ministry, which determines university placement, of fraud and discrimination, insisting that as many as 60,000 of them failed purely on the basis of their ethnicity and mother language.

More than 600 degree programmes in 60 universities in Iran are now segregated by gender, in what is being seen as a major expansion of the government's efforts to separate male and female students. Iranian rights groups released the report of a study by Student News, which found that there has not only been an increase in gender separation but also in gender discrimination.

A Chinese system that places promising athletes in prestigious universities while the less athletic compete in annual entrance examinations is spurring controversy and considerable debate which may lead to reforms.

The Malaysian government announced the allocation of seats at public universities last week, and it sparked uproar among ethnic Chinese and Indians. Only 19% of places were awarded to Chinese and 4% to Indian students – and even some with the highest exam scores failed to gain a place on their preferred course. The ethnic breakdown of the Malaysian population is 23% Chinese and 7% Indian, while 60% are Malay according to the most recent census. The results prompted the treasurer general of the Malaysian Indian Congress,– to say it was "the most unfair and biased public university intake in the history of Malaysia".