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A federal grand jury in Kansas indicted a former college-basketball coach last month on charges that he arranged for his players to receive phony academic credit and stole $120,000 in Pell Grants. The former coach faces a total of 51 years in prison and over $1.5-million in fines if found guilty of all counts.

A school administrative staff has been jailed for 8 months at Eastern Magistracy for accepting a $100,000 loan from a cleaning contractor for renewing service contracts of the school for longer terms without consent of the school. The defendant must pay $15,600 in restitution to the school.

The education ministry has failed to take action against teachers and other education officers identified as guilty of misconduct by various investigations and commissions over the years. Affairs between schoolgirls and teachers, and schools misusing equipment given to them to improve the quality of education are among the countless problems that had emerged from investigations.

According to investigations conducted in Nicaragua, among the 3 500 teachers from autonomous colleges who actually collect a salary on a monthly basis, in reality only 1 945 of them are actually teaching. At least 555 individual salaries are therefore paid to fictitious teachers or to individuals falsely (fraudulently) using the names of teachers.

The Nigerian education Minister is accused for having given bribes to parliamentarians so they increase the budget for his ministry. Arrested last Thursday, he was released five days later. The President has asked the Minister to resign. The government of Olusegun Obasanjo, which has promised to fight against corruption, has not yet managed to take away Nigeria's reputation as a corrupt country.

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.

Nigeria's former education minister and six others have gone on trial charged with corruption. The former minister is accused of paying a $400,000 bribe to parliament to ensure the passing of an inflated budget for his department.

Twenty-two teachers are involved in a multimillion-rand fraud. Provincial education department officials have taken advantage of an offer of amnesty in return for information on the ringleaders. All the teachers would face criminal charges as the amnesty was only for the departmental disciplinary process.

An official in the Ministry of Higher Education, who was apprehended on suspicion of theft from a government safe, is still in police custody, while investigations involving about N$98,300, which disappeared from a government safe, could reveal other suspects.

The Head of the Department of Economic Crimes Prevention of the Ministry of the Interior said in July 2006 that there were 210 cases of bribery registered in higher education institutions in that year, of which 11 were in Kiev. He mentioned a departmental chair in Lugansk who demanded that students pay his bills from the electronics and construction stores and he accepted cash as well. The corrupt chair was arrested while receiving a bribe of $2000. In yet another case, deputy-director of the Kiev National University's college was arrested while receiving a bribe of $6000. The number of investigated cases appears to be the tip of the iceberg as corruption in education is believed to be widespread.