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The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) has booked eight persons, including four former employees of the varsity and four private persons for criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, and falsification of accounts. While perusing the details of registration and tuition fees of 16,580 students, the DVAC officials found that the serial number of one demand draft was used multiple times against several students.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) is investigating dozens of cases involving politicians, State and public officers over forged degrees, illegal allocation of resources, irregular employment, and approval of suspected pending bills. According to EACC’s chief executive officer, money and assets will be recovered from politicians who used forged academic certificates to win elective posts, even from those who retired.

A report from Calcutta High Court shows how the West Bengal Central School Service Commission (WBSSC) allegedly misused the Right to Information (RTI) Act to facilitate illegal recruitment. The chairman of the WBSSC had instructed the chairpersons of the five regional commissions to scan and store their signatures on the WBSSC’s application server. These were used as illegal digital signatures for over 500 fake recommendation letters, allegedly hand-delivered to undeserving candidates.

When a doctoral student denounced the theft of her work, she was told that it was part of the game. One in five PhD students in the academic world is facing this practice. According to an online survey conducted among 1,800 PhD students and young doctors, 21% of respondents said they had seen someone else take credit for their work. Concerned about the impact on their future careers, many PhD students choose to remain silent on such abuse.

Nigeria’s National Universities Commission (NUC) had discovered fake institutions in Benin awarding PhD degrees after students completed bogus studies in less than one year. According to NUC, academic projects and theses were sold for about NGN3,000 (about US$7.32) per copy, and sexual harassment was prevalent. Many of these fraudulent institutions are run by Nigerian proprietors who target students from Nigeria, where public universities struggle to accommodate a high number of qualified students seeking admission.

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.

According to a new report, 11% of the assignments submitted by Australian university students were written by someone else. More than 95% of students who cheat in this way are never caught. A survey distributed to 4100 students at six universities found two types of contract cheating: paying someone else to write a paper or downloading it from a collection of pre-written assignments.

According to an associate professor at the University of Calgary, the rate of academic misconduct during the pandemic rose from 38% to over 200%. Students who use the services of companies to write essays or complete assignments for them are often extorted. Companies continue to charge their credit cards, threatening to report them to their schools if they try to seek help.

The “proliferation” of essay mills over the past 5 years has led to an increase in the number of plagiarism cases. Last year, 338 cases were reported by universities in the North, with the majority of cases at Aberdeen University and Robert Gordon University. 1,000 essay mills companies are currently operating across the UK. Some are allegedly involved in exploiting graduates overseas where they are forced to work 12-hour shifts producing essays for as little as $1 an hour.