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Admissions, courses, grades and diplomas are for sale in high profile higher institutions. Admissions officers offer expensive private lessons. Reforms should include an accreditation system, an entrance exam and an increase in financing.

In 1998, the education watchdog group from Bombay, the Forum for Fairness in Education, won a landmark case that clamped down on secretive admissions practices. The court ruled that all colleges and universities must make entrance-examination scores public, to ensure that admissions are based on merit, and not money passed under the table.

Ten weeks in charge of Belgrade's most unruly high school killed its Director's passion for education. Few of the staff members were willing to cooperate with her efforts to stop a system of bribery for good grades. When the police caught one math teacher accepting a marked 50-euros note from a student and the problem came out into the open, the teachers rebelled against her with a vote of no confidence in her authority.

New Delhi police arrested four people for offering to sell the answers to a nationwide examination for physicians. All the students were to meet on the eve of the test and prepare it through the night. They impounded post-dated checks totalling more than $300,000.

Israel grants government workers 10 to 20% pay increases for every advanced degree they earn; and as a result, dozens of civil servants, including top education officials, have been put under investigation for obtaining fake degrees.

The Russian Federation will begin testing a system of state examinations this year, similar in format to the SAT in the United States and aimed at reducing corruption and creating equitable access to higher education. A single test is planned to be instituted nationwide in 2004.