The co-owner of an online charter school network in California was accused of stealing tens of millions of dollars intended for primary education. He used a variety of schemes to inflate school enrollment to obtain state education funds, including getting small school districts to allow online charter schools, paying sports leagues, camps, and other youth programs to collect student information, distorting school calendars and moving children between online campuses to obtain maximum funding.

California community college officials uncovered the state’s biggest financial aid scam attempts: over 60,000 aid applications compared to 2019, from students older than 30 earning less than US$40,000 annually and seeking a two-year degree rather than a vocational certificate. Faculty were also beginning to question whether many of their ‘students’ were actually fake bot accounts. California community colleges have received more than $1.6 billion in emergency COVID-19 relief for low-income students.

The position of Director of the International Human Rights Programme at the University of Toronto was offered to an "academically unworthy" individual after US$8 million was donated to the university's medical schools. A US banking company, which reportedly made large donations through its foundation to at least 60 universities, demanded to teach a course from a particular political perspective. As a result, colleges and universities in North America are developing written policies to prevent undue influence from donors.

School officials in the city of Athens and Limestone County have conspired to obtain more public funding by claiming to enrol full-time private students in the system's virtual schools. The two school districts were improperly paid around $7 million in state education funding for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years. By November 2017, more than 500 private school students were fraudulently enrolled in Athens Renaissance schools and over 50 students in Conecuh County.

The Florida Department of Education revealed that the Sarasota County School District falsified records and placed students on alternate assessment to avoid state testing or accountability in order to benefit financially. Investigators found that 27 of 66 sampled students’ files did not include sufficient documentation to demonstrate that they were placed correctly.

The director of the Training Domain, an educational institution in Fort Meyers designed to improve students ‘employability skills, has been charged with 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of Federal Student Assistance (FSA) fraud. From July 2017 to April 2019, she assisted students in applying for financial aid but instead of using the loan and grant proceeds to hold classes and for other educational expenses, the director kept the FSA fund and split them with students. She also created false and fraudulent high school diplomas.

The Department of Justice reports that a former Cleveland Clinic Foundation researcher has been arrested and charged with wire fraud and false claims for allegedly failing to disclose funds he received from the Chinese government while simultaneously accepting more than $3.6 million in funding from the National Institute of Health.

Roslyn New York school principal and her assistant were involved in a case of embezzlement that misappropriated some $11 million from students. At the New Orleans Public School, 30 convictions were recorded, including a former school board president who took more than $140,000 in bribes. According to reports from the Inspector General of the Department of Education, the office receives more corruption reports than it can investigate.

A 2019 report showed that $6.5 billion in foreign gifts to U.S. institutions were not reported. To hold colleges and universities accountable and ensure that their reporting is full, accurate, and transparent, the Department of Education enforces Section 117 of the Higher Education, which requires colleges to report all gifts and contracts involving foreign sources worth $250,000 or more.