The report of the National Anti-Corruption Commission revealed suspicions of financial and administrative corruption in the public education sector for the year 2018. These suspicions include embezzlement of funds by the accountant of a college in Menzel Bouzelfa (Nabeul), as well as the appropriation of public funds by the headmaster of a primary school in the governorate of Sidi Bouzid.

110 offices selling forged degrees from non-Saudi universities have been identified by the Ministry of Higher Education. Prices for a fake bachelor’s or master’s degree can cost anywhere from SR3,000 to SR30,000 while a bogus doctorate can cost up to SR90,000 from an institution in the west. The degrees supplied by these diploma mills are issued by institutions that offer courses without approved standards or are simply issued by the transfer of money into an overseas account. Measures have been taken to detect such agencies.

In order to cope with the assessment demands of rapidly growing student numbers, and rising incidents of grade tampering and cheating, many African universities are exploring the option of e-exams. While the traditional systems can go as far as bribe-taking by lecturers, invigilators and supervisors as well as examination leakages, e -exams might not be suitable for testing skills like synthesizing information, understanding evidence, critical problem-solving.

Several politicians are accused of ‘misleading voters’ during elections last year and for having fake or questionable academic qualifications. Deputy Foreign Minister’s academic credentials were the first to be called into question. After a police report, he admitted the unaccredited Cambridge International University in the United States granted his degree, which some have claimed was a diploma mill.

Lebanon ranks 143rd out of 180 countries in the world in 2017 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index. The President of the Central Inspectorate states that the Ministry of Education has "reduced teachers' working hours" and is carrying out recruitments, "which are not necessary”. He announced unexpected visits to public administrations in 2019 as part of the fight against corruption in order to introduce a tool to monitor recruitment.

Given that scientists are judged in large part by the number of peer-reviewed papers they produce, it’s easy to understand the temptation to engage in salami publication. It’s officially discouraged, but it’s still very common to see researchers writing perhaps 3 or 4 papers based on a single project that could, realistically, have been one big paper. In an extreme case of salami slicing, the journal Archives of Iranian Medicine published a set of 33 papers about one study.

The excitement that marks the beginning of the academic year in the Algerian higher education sector, belies a crisis of credibility in the wake of several recent incidents of cheating. Last October, teachers in the faculty of economics at the University of Algiers disclosed the names of students accused of cheating in a doctoral entrance examination, but thus far no action against the students has been reported in the media. In a city east of Algeria two masters examinations were cancelled in October after model answers were leaked, while in the west, four doctoral projects in the faculty of arts and literature were nullified following complaints of academic dishonesty.