After several media reports that thousands of the Makerere university's alumni are potential fraudsters, several employers are contacting the transcript office for verification of academic documents. According to an officer at the Academic Registrar's office, bankers, customs officials and journalists have forged their paths to jobs they should never have had at all.

Makarere University, in Uganda, one of the most prestigious universities in Africa may revoke 200 degrees awarded in the past years after an internal committee charged with investigating academic fraud, discovered that students have been enrolled without any evidence that they met admissions criteria.

Nichols and Berliner demonstrate that high-stakes testing is wrong—intellectually, morally, and practically. Not only will it "not work" to improve education, it is already doing demonstrable harm. Bringing together many press accounts of the negative impact of high stakes testing, Nichols and Berliner provide convincing argument that the punitive measures accompanying this testing is destroying America's greatest invention, its public schools.

The plagiarism is more and more spread in universities. In cause, Internet. To overcome this phenomenon, the catholic university of Louvain makes sensitive and tests a detector software of plagiarism. Every work or report is scanned by the software. Green light, the work is "sane". Red light, similarities with accessible documents on the Web or in the works of other students exist and the teacher will have to establish the scale of the plagiarism.

"Degree mills" are impeding the efforts to assure quality in higher education—a significant national issue for some time and now an international concern. In response, the US-based Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) recently joined with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to bring together an informal group of higher education and quality assurance/accreditation leaders to focus on degree mills. Issues on the traits and the perils of degree mills, and on the national and international policies to curb that phenomenon will be discussed.

People in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have been found buying fake degrees of all sorts from diploma mills and other bogus universities. Those universities have no physical existence and operate only through websites. Most diploma mills are operating from Britain or United States where academic standards are presumed to be very high. Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigations compiled a list of over 10,000 persons who obtained fake degrees from diploma mills in USA. A significant number of them are from South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. Currently, there are about 80 notorious diploma mills that operate from the United States and the UK.

In 2002, the Liberian embassy's deputy chief of mission began his fraudulent transactions with American owners of St Regis diploma mill. They agreed to sell Liberian university accreditation to "St Regis University" for $2,250. They then decide to create two other diploma mills: Robertstown and James Monroe. By the end of 2003, Liberian officials under their sway included senior diplomats in at least two embassies, a minister of justice, a foreign minister, two successive directors of Liberia's National Commission for Higher Education, and a number of other diplomats and government officials, including several at the Ministry of Education. The United States Secret Service finally unveiled their embezzlement.

Teaching positions are for sale in Mexico, and have been for decades. Although seldom discussed, the practice—established by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to reward party loyalists—is apparently widespread. The going price for a teaching position in a public primary school is reported to be between $5,000 and $12,000, depending on locale. Teachers who resign can either sell their positions or pass them on to their children. In at least some cases, local governments and the teachers' union supervise the buying and selling process. However, a recent reform effort—the "Alliance for Education Quality" (ACE)—signed by the government and the national teachers' union in May, would base new teacher appointments on merit, via an examination administered by an independent body. Not surprisingly, it has generated a vociferous response at the grass-roots level. Teachers have gone on strike in many states, marching on government offices, closing schools and blocking streets.

The Education Amendment Bill proposes the creation of an information matching programme which will allow the identification of teachers who are teaching without a current practicing certificate or authorization. In addition the Bill provides greater clarity to school boards of trustees on their roles, and increases flexibility around timing of board elections, the establishment of boards and alternative board constitutions.

From 1995 to 2001, Nigerian degree mills produced annually about 15 percent of total university graduates in the country. In the past 9 years, a flurry of activity has been directed at eradicating the degree mills. In 1999, the National Council on Education (NUC) directed the closure of all local and foreign satellite campuses. It also partnered with the Department of State Services (Nigeria's secret service) in locating, arresting, and prosecuting operators of unapproved universities and satellite campuses. Finally, it directed approved universities to make full disclosure of their programs, which have been listed in the Directory of Approved Programmes in the Nigerian University System.