The U.S. Department of Justice may be breathing new life into a whistle-blower lawsuit that seeks to collect about $1billion from the University of Phoenix, the nation's largest private institution of higher education. The suit was dismissed in May by a federal district-court judge in California on technical grounds but the parties appealed.

In spring 2004 interviews were conducted with 43 rectors, vice rectors, and administrators at five private universities. A consensus emerged that successful licensing or accreditation applications, with few exceptions, required some form of bribery. Licensing might require a bribe of US$ 200 about two months' salary for a typical academic - while accreditation might call for a 10 or 20 times greater "gratuity."

The Bangladesh government has decided to warn students and their guardians of the fact that private universities' open outer campuses in the guise of regional resource centers, study centers, etc. The ministry has come to know that students who take admission in those unapproved local universities are frequently cheated. Actually, there are 51 private universities in Bangladesh which were run according to the Private University Act 1992, as amended in 1998.

In Georgia, the Soviet legacy and the later collapse of state institutions produced an educational system plagued by corruption, nepotism, centralization and lack of teachers and professors. In addition, during the 90's, private low-quality schools with titles like "university" and "institute" sprang up. Controversies have been raised after colleges and universities have been closed or merged, and thousands of academic and administrative positions abolished.

Because obtaining any education is seen as the main goal by most Chinese, the new private universities which have appeared in almost every major province are seen like an opportunity to lower Chinese University Examinations scores to have access to superior education.

The economic and financial crimes commission and the police have begun the prosecution of proprietors of three illegal private universities operating in the country. The proprietors of the institutions are being prosecuted for operating illegally and for collecting money illegally from innocent students.

The Department of Education has organized a campaign to urged parents of public and private school students to join the government in its fight against corruption. The department has launched a new Graft and Corruption Prevention Education Teaching Exemplars (GCPETE) which will be used by public school teachers to integrate anti-graft and corruption lessons in values education for elementary and schools.

The Ministry of education will probe private schools over irregularities in the fight against corruption. The education minister and the Board of audit and inspection will soon jointly select private schools suspected of mismanaging their schools. They will only investigate those which are suspected of mismanagement and corruption, rather than doing random investigation.

The Chilean government's Lower House has rejected the findings of a report investigating allegations of educational profiteering in seven private universities. Student leaders and opposition politicians criticized this ruling, claiming that the government must not ignore illegal educational profiteering in Chile.

Private and public universities in South Korea have engaged in creative accounting practices resulting in excessive hikes in tuition fees, the state audit agency said. Wrapping up an investigation into 35 randomly chosen universities, including nine public institutions, the Board of Audit and Inspection said the institutions had habitually manipulated their accounting books over the past five years to justify steep rises in tuition expenses.