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Reports that one of Japan's most prestigious medical universities tampered with female applicants' entrance exam scores have sparked an outcry on social media. Tokyo Medical University began altering results in 2011 to ensure under 30% of successful applicants would be women. The private university says it will investigate the discrimination reports. Users online took aim at the Japanese government over the scandal. Critics suggested the allegations were ironic given Prime Minister stated commitment to boost female participation in the workforce. The biggest daily newspaper in Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun, published the report examining student admission numbers on Thursday, generating complaints.

A student at Peking University, China’s top institution, has been allowed to return to the campus after being barred for days for asking questions about campus sexual harassment and rape cases dating back to the 1990s. A student at the School of Foreign Languages at Peking University (PKU), together with seven other students, had lodged a freedom of information request to the university on Shen Yang, a former PKU professor accused of sexual misconduct while at PKU in the 1990s. PKU has said in recent days it will do more to prevent sexual harassment, and that it had “zero tolerance” for violations of students’ rights.

Thousands of UK nationals have bought fake degrees from a multi-million pound "diploma mill" in Pakistan, a BBC Radio 4's File on Four programme investigation has found. Buyers include NHS consultants, nurses and a large defence contractor. One British buyer spent almost £500,000 on bogus documents. The Department for Education said it was taking "decisive action to crack down on degree fraud" that "cheats genuine learners

Universities are being urged to block websites that sell essays, identify cheating "hot spots" and consider publishing data on breaches of academic integrity. As universities grapple with a rise in contract cheating – which involves students outsourcing assessments – Australia's higher education watchdog has unveiled new guidelines to tackle the issue. A recent survey by a University of South Australia associate professor who helped create the guidelines, found that 6 per cent of Australian students engaged in cheating.

Plagiarism has been taboo for some and an open secret for others in Algeria, but is today a scandal that no one can deny – even though Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research officials are trying to minimise the problem. Some flagrant examples of plagiarism have emerged into the public sphere, and they appear to be the tip of the iceberg. The ministry of higher education and scientific research, has adopted series of measures to curb this phenomenon, including instructing all universities to set up databases on their websites in which all works and theses produced by students, lecturers and researchers are reported.

Tanzania has suspended student loans amounting to TZS3.2 billion (US$1.5 million) affecting over 2,000 students, some of whom are believed to be non-existent as they failed to show up during a verification exercise. Media reports said the two-month-long exercise carried out twice was to confirm that the students who were benefiting through the Tanzania’s Higher Education Students’ Loans Board, or HESLB, at various institutions of higher learning actually existed and were legitimate students.

China is warning its students to steer clear of fake universities. An information website has published a list of 30 such institutions following the annual college entry exam in June. This is the sixth such list in existence. Apparently, faking an entire educational institution isn’t all that difficult. And authorities say they’re becoming harder to spot. No less than a dozen provinces and regions – including Beijing and Shanghai - were mentioned in a list by sdaxue.com, an education information website, according to Xinhua. Some 30 fake universities were mentioned, compounding an already fat list of 400 since 2013.

First, there was the #OromoProtest which led to the cancelation by the government in Ethiopia of the Ethiopia Higher Education Entrance Exam (EHEEE), which was scheduled to take place as of May 30. The leaking by unknown individuals and the dumping on the social media by Oromo activists of this national school leaving exam has now sparked a debate amongst Ethiopia’s net-citizens, and the media. Surprisingly (or not for that matter) the debate is on whether or not leaking the exams and dumping them online trespasses the moral obligation of safeguarding the academic lives of more than 250, 000 students who were readying to sit for the exams.