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Fake Degrees and Fraudulent Credentials in Higher Education brings together contributions from authors in different fields and parts of the world, offering an overview of various aspects of academic fraud and highlighting the erosion of trust in academia and academics that systematically accompanies such cases. In the first chapter of the book on contract cheating and paper mills, we learn that the worldwide fake degree industry has grown from US$1 billion in 2015 to US$22 billion in 2022. Experts estimate that 4.7 billion people hold or have held fake diplomas.

The Justice Department has unsealed conspiracy and wire fraud charges against 25 people in the $114 million sale of 7,600 fake diplomas from three now-defunct South Florida nursing schools. According to an FBI agent, the investigation into the nursing certificates began in 2019. The certificates allowed untrained individuals to sit for national nursing board exams and at least 2,800 of them passed.

Following the arrest of a lecturer at the University of Kigali over allegedly forging academic documents, Rwanda’s Higher Education Council (HEC) decided to withdraw recognition for PhD degrees obtained from the United States Atlantic International University. The university has an accreditation from a UK based independent international educational agency, however, dismissed by HEC, because it is not a government agency in charge of accreditation in the UK or elsewhere.

Following an increase in breaches of academic integrity during the remote fall term, two teaching assistants (TAs) are asking Queen’s University to take action against academic misconduct. In grading final assignments using Turnitin, they found that four of her five plagiarism cases had copy rates of 50 and 60 per cent. When reporting the cases of plagiarism, the administration claimed the process was ‘’intense’ while the professor of the course suggested marking the assignment with a 20 per cent grade deduction because they “didn’t want to make this misconduct a big deal.”

A former administrator from Houston Independent School District was sentenced to one year of probation for her involvement in the admission scandal that ensnared wealthy parents across the country. She was accused of taking bribes from the admission consultant at the center of the scheme in exchange for allowing someone to sit exams on behalf of their clients ‘children or correct their answers. 50 more people were arrested last year in the scheme, in which authorities say undeserving kids were admitted to top universities with bogus athletic credentials or fake test scores.

Six officials at the Apex School of Theology orchestrated a scam to fraudulently claim $12 million in Federal student aid. The scheme involved recruiting fake students, forging fake applications for financial aid, as well as plagiarizing schoolwork and diplomas. FBI called the conspiracy a “blatant abuse of a Federally funded program” and “an insult to all taxpayers.

Since 2019, there has been an increase in the number of searches for domains that participate in “academic fraud. The phrase “do my homework” on Google yields 270 million results. As a growing number of students learn remotely during the pandemic, hundreds of websites offer to do homework or take exams for them. However, these websites do not only provide poor content but also turn the web browsers of anyone else who shares the student’s network, into cryptocurrency miners or literally infecting their computers with malware.

The director of the Training Domain, an educational institution in Fort Meyers designed to improve students ‘employability skills, has been charged with 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of Federal Student Assistance (FSA) fraud. From July 2017 to April 2019, she assisted students in applying for financial aid but instead of using the loan and grant proceeds to hold classes and for other educational expenses, the director kept the FSA fund and split them with students. She also created false and fraudulent high school diplomas.

Reports indicate that not only do Chinese students cheat on their college applications, but many continue even after they have arrived in the U.S. An admissions official at the University of Southern California recognized that he earned $40,000 from clients over the years by providing “false college transcripts with inflated grades,” “fraudulent personal statements,” and “phony letters of recommendation” for the applications of his Chinese clients.

The T.M. Landry College Preparatory School in Louisiana is under federal investigation over its college admissions practices, transcripts with fake grades, non-existent school clubs and fictitious classes. Many students accused the founder of the school of abusing them and falsifying their transcripts. The court records reveal that he was accused of choking and dragging a student. In the investigation, the founder said that wall-sits and kneeling were used to motivate students and prepare them for the challenges of the real world.