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Welcome to Patna, a city that in its own strange way has married the free market to the classroom. The arrests of several peoples for leaking the question papers for the Common Admission Test for entry to the Indian Institutes of Management are only the tip of the iceberg.

In a decision intended to curb the widespread sale of seats in professional colleges, India's Supreme Court has ordered that private institutions may no longer demand the "donation" of extra, upfront fees from new students. Medical and engineering colleges now demand upfront payments of tens of thousands of dollars, from students whose test scores do not qualify them for places.

Community endowment funds are being experimented in Egypt. They are managed by village committees with the active participation of parents with support from the private sector. They lobby government for better resource allocation.

Higher-education authorities in Britain, China, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States have sounded the alarm about the increase in incidents of attempted admissions fraud. Authorities say cases of fraud typically involve students from developing countries who are desperate to get degrees from universities in developed countries, including those in Western Europe and the United States. A handful of countries seem to have the most offenders, including China, Colombia, Iraq, Nigeria and several former Soviet republics, particularly Armenia.

Fees for manipulating entrance test scores are between $80 to $20 000 for the most popular programs, such as computer science, medicine or engineering. Many feel the only way to clean up the system is to expand educational opportunities.

Japan. Kenya. Mexico. United Kingdom. USA: People from the Kenyan Ministry of Education participated in selling fake diplomas. In the USA and Mexico, students buy term papers and admissions essays online. People propose to take tests for others in China.

Corruption in admissions procedure, the sitting of exams and the allocation of scholarships is rampant in Chinese universities. One positive outcome of a recent plagiarism scandal is the design of a code of conduct for students and professors by Beijing's University.

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.