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Two professors at the University of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who alerted the law about embezzlement of funds, are facing the sack on the orders of the Minister of Higher and University Education.

The committee set up in March last year by the Education Minister to investigate racism and sexism in higher education has revealed that discrimination was pervasive despite all the good policies generated by the institutions. The committee believes that the racism persists in higher education mostly because of the weakness of the institutions' information dissemination: it recommended the creation of a transformation compact which will help to oversight the institutions to sensitize staff to the different needs of students from various cultural and economic backgrounds.

The recent stripping off of a PhD title of a Polytechnic, was as disgraceful and fraudulent as it was happening under the watchful eye of academics. Surprisingly, government which should have been more concerned with this academic fraud seems unruffled. If people with falsified academic and professional qualifications flood the job market, the results are, obviously, incompetence, loss of business and failure to meet set targets or goals.

For the very first time in Guinea, professors were suspended by their functions for facts of corruption and the students were condemned to pay a fine or to a prison sentence for fraud in the examinations. During his taking of office, Mr Souaré, Minister of the Higher education and the scientific research - who arises from the labor union of the teachers and which fought in the past against the corruption - had indicated that it would make of the fight against the fraud and the corruption its first priority.

The university "Laique Advantiste de Kigali" (Unilak) has defied a directive from the Education ministry requiring it to submit academic credentials of recruited lecturers for verification. According to sources in the ministry, the university leadership continues to recruit students. Unilak secured a provisional license but the ministry nevertheless refused to grant it the degree-awarding accreditation, citing lack of capacity to provide quality education.

The news of examination leakages has rocked the West African Examination Council. The leaked papers have forced the council to cancel and reschedule the papers. Both staff and auxiliary workers are now under probe. The leakage occurred despite various measures to eliminate cheating. The council has designed a website and introduced the embossment of passport photographs on certificates to avoid impersonation of candidates.

The University Council of the University of Ghana has given the Vice-Chancellor a week's grace before stepping aside as the administrative head of the University. The decision followed in the wake of massive examination malpractices that have threatened the integrity of degrees awarded by the country's premier university. The Vice-Chancellor is also responsible for nepotism.

The legal advisor to the Eduardo Mondlane University has denied that there was anything improper in giving scholarships to people who do not work at the university. In 2003 alone, over 147,000 US dollars, money that should have been used to send teachers to take further degrees abroad, in order to build up the institutional capacity of the university, were allegedly spent instead on the Vice-Chancellor's daughter, two children of the head of the universities public relations and 16 others.