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With more universities and offices requiring English qualifications from graduates, students are turning to hiring other people to sit their English exams. The police in HCM City's Thu Duc District are investigating a case in which 34 students at the HCM City University of Agriculture and Forestry hired impersonators for their English exams. Last year, 10 impersonators were uncovered. Meanwhile, universities which require students take TOEFL, TOEIC or IELTS tests as English graduation exams have received a number of fake certificates.

The Minister of Primary and Secondary Education last week slammed the parents for paying Form One entrance examination fees saying they did that at their own peril as the Government has set an enrolment date for all the schools in the country. He said the entrance exams were banned long back by his ministry and have remained illegal and should not be left to continue. Enrolment of Form One students for next year started yesterday with parents expected to use their children's Grade Seven results.

Many instances were witnessed across the country, where parents arrived at schools to return free uniform material vouchers which were invalid. There were also instances where parents complained of the insufficient value attached to these vouchers, and where parents were unable to purchase quality material for a specified price. Against this backdrop, several teachers and principals’ associations staged a joint media briefing in Colombo, highlighting the fact that teachers, students and parents, have been inconvenienced by the new voucher system.

At the end of November, for the first time, 500 of INSA Toulouse most recent graduates received a secure card which attested to the authenticity of their engineering degree at their graduation ceremony. The aim of the operation is to fight against cheating and forgery. The cards given to the students are protected against forgery by a nanoparticle marker which is invisible to the naked eye.

The recent confession to bribery by, the former admissions director for Renmin University, has called into question the integrity of the Chinese college admission system. The President has been mounting a campaign against corruption in China for more than three years, with higher education as one of the focal points. The ruling Communist Party’s antigraft agency has singled out 32 people working in higher education for investigations this year, with China’s education minister saying that corruption would not be tolerated in the education system.

In south Korea, a case of plagiarism has shaken the academic world. 200 professors from 50 different universities have been accused of appropriating books by other authors. Their technique to avoid discovery? These unscrupulous academics simply changed the original covers of the publications and added their own names. According to the Korea Herald, some of the alleged culprits are well known assistant professors.