Ways in which students cheat are either ingenious or surprisingly obvious. Why do students cheat, and risk having to retake a module, having their degree classification lowered, or even being kicked out of university? There are many reasons – including financial pressure, poor organisational skills and panic – sometimes among young people who should never have gone to university in the first place or, at the very least, who should have had more support structures in place when they started.

Thousands of students have signed up to 'unlawful' contracts that allow universities to increase tuition fees arbitrarily or discontinue their course, an investigation has alleged. University students can have their fees increased or their degree course altered on a whim as a result of unfair contract terms. A consumer lobby group said one in five universities were using unlawful contract terms to give them unlimited power to change courses once students have enrolled.

Many of the UK’s leading universities are refusing to spell out just how they are spending their students’ £9,000 (US$13,600) a year tuition fees. The influential think-tank, the Higher Education Policy Institute, invited a range of institutions to explain how they were spending the money - but the majority, including almost all the of the country’s most select universities, declined to reply.

Tuition for university studies has been growing steadily in Romania in the last few years, according to the National Alliance of Student Organizations in Romania (ANOSR). Many of the taxes paid by students at 21 universities in the country are "unjustified, borderline illegal or simply illegal".

A third of French universities are "illegally" charging students for services that should be covered by statutory fees, claims Unef, France's biggest student union.

Since taking over the Kremlin last month, President Medvedev, has made it a priority to combat what he calls "legal nihilism" in Russia. A campaign has begun to clean the courts of bribe-taking judges and letters from members of the public, complaining about corruption, have been published on the Kremlin website. Reporting on the results at St. Petersburg, the daily Kommersant said that 83 out of 200 students in the law faculty had failed their state examinations. Some who had received grade 2, the lowest mark, had been expecting to leave with "red diplomas" or distinctions. Among those who failed were students who had paid fees.

The government has introduced a "Unified State Examination' test in the fight against corruption. The test will weed out weak teacher, improve the quality of instruction in schools and would ease the financial burden on parents of college students.