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South Korea’s Ministry of Education is planning to strengthen measures related to school bullying records and their consideration during university admission applications after the appointment of a new national investigation chief was cancelled following revelations that he was involved in a lawsuit against his son’s forced school transfer for bullying.

To promote their academic position and for other financial benefits, many teachers including university professors, submit their thesis papers based on plagiarism. Last January, three professors at Dhaka University were dismissed following accusations of plagiarism in their research work. In the last five years at least 10 teachers of the same institution have also been accused of plagiarism or violation of copyright rules in their research works.

In Russia and Ukraine, discussion of sexual abuse is not welcomed. Nevertheless, faculty and staff are involved in exploiting and abusing students in many different ways like offering positive grades in examinations in exchange for sex. It is not only students who suffer from sexual harassment but also faculty and staff recruitment. Promotion is influenced by bribes or sexual favours as well.

According to a professor from the National Universities Commission, 60% of essays by final-year undergraduates contained plagiarism, at masters’ level it was between 15-20% and at PhD level about 8% contained plagiarism. The vice-chancellor of Delta State University announced that in an attempt to instill academic discipline and honesty, the institution had sanctioned more than 15 lecturers for various forms of publication-related plagiarism. According to a source at the university, such sanctions involved demotions and no promotions for periods between three and five years.

The Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science, and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University conducted a study on the quality of South Africa’s research publications, which includes predatory publishing. 4,246 South African papers published in 48 journals were found to be predatory. Several studies suggest that some academics are falling into predatory publication traps due to the pressure to publish, get more grants and boost their academic reputation.

Kazakhstan’s anti-corruption strategies are showing early signs of progress, a top official at the country’s Agency for Civil Service Affairs and Fighting Corruption said. Among the cited projects was Sanaly Urpak (Conscious Generation), established in Almaty, which seeks to minimise corruption in the education system. The project has developed an optimal solution for curbing corruption at the secondary and higher education level, as well as disseminating the academic honesty principle. University academic integrity and cohesion ratings will be issued annually based on project estimates.

In order to improve the quality of published research and to crack down on so-called ‘predatory’ academic publishers – who charge fees to authors but fail to provide adequate quality control, or make misleading claims about their quality – India’s University Grants Commission (UGC) has published lists of approved journals for publishing research papers. The UGC, a statutory body that oversees university education in India, has now linked academic promotions and recruitment to its system of Academic Performance Indicators which will only recognise papers published in journals that are on the approved lists.

The Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities or AVCNU has proposed reforms to deal with the increasing number of individuals being promoted to professorships without apparently following due process.
At its recent annual conference, AVCNU took a unanimous decision to put forward a reform proposal to the National Universities Commission to arrest the trend, which is threatening the integrity of some institutions.
Some of the irregularities with regard to promotion have been leaked to the media, resulting in embarrassment for the affected universities. Since the story appeared, individuals have been emboldened to speak out about how other academics have become professors in questionable situations.