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According to the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, there are over 1,000 essay mills in operation in UK universities. The government announced that offering essay-writing services to students for a fee will become a criminal offence under plans to tackle cheating. Universities welcomed this decision and introduced codes of conduct with severe penalties for submitting work that is not a student's own.

An investigation at Baltimore city school found that administrators schemed to inflate enrollment, pressured teachers to change grades and scheduled students into classes that didn’t exist. Over a three-year period, about 100 students remained on the rolls but didn’t attend the school. The school operated evening and summer courses designed to allow students to make up credits, but the courses didn’t meet standards. In some cases, unqualified teachers were assigned to teach the classes, and in other cases, staff members were named as teachers of record for a class they never taught.

Following the implementation of the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023) any new Higher Education institution in Ghana that advertises or runs a programme for which it has no accreditation, penalties will include paying a fine of GHS240,000 (US$41,400). Alternatively, the vice-chancellor or rector of the institution concerned will be imprisoned for up to 20 years, but both penalties can be applied.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission’s investigation reveals that 10 national universities in South Korea allegedly misappropriated KRW9.4 billion of students’ tuition fees. The funds were intended to cover student guidance programmes and safety activities carried out by professors and staff during lunch hours, after work or on weekends. Employees at one of the national universities overstated the number of such activities by changing locations and clothes earning KRW1.2 billion.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has declared 24 universities in the country as fake. According to the UGC, universities can confer degrees only if the university is established under a Central, State-Provincial Act or by an institution, which is a deemed-to-be university. Besides, institutions specially empowered by an Act of Parliament may also award degrees to students.

An audit reveals that Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy wrongly received $68.7 million in state payments by improperly claiming students as enrolled between 2011 and 2019 even though they had no online course activity. The two schools operated under shared administration and declared 7,200 students last year. However, they closed last summer after national officials cut off funding.