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A survey of 2,000 university students and 500 employees conducted by the Center for the Development of Youth Activism (CROA), found every fourth student has had an encounter with corruption - such as paying for a better grade. In addition to bribes and coerced textbook purchases, some students were pressured to join political parties and extorted for sexual favours. CROA is not only passing on the complaints to universities for a follow-up investigation, but is also planning anti-corruption training for professors, staff, and students. And it is working to include conflict of interest in universities’ codes of ethics.

Six Iranian and Azerbaijani nationals have been arrested for stealing and selling questions and answers from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) that foreign students take for admission to universities in the United States and Turkey. The suspects allegedly charged the “buyers” between $2,000 and $3,000 for the questions provided in their network called “quarantine houses”. While searching the addresses where the suspects were arrested, Turkish police found SAT admission papers, official test question books and a host of digital evidence.

Six vice-chancellors from Cambridge, Exeter and UCL have signed up to a pledge which commits universities to stop using legally binding non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) against students and staff who report sexual harassment. The Higher Education Minister stated that universities should end the use of NDAs which “buy victims’ silence” in sexual misconduct cases.

The “proliferation” of essay mills over the past 5 years has led to an increase in the number of plagiarism cases. Last year, 338 cases were reported by universities in the North, with the majority of cases at Aberdeen University and Robert Gordon University. 1,000 essay mills companies are currently operating across the UK. Some are allegedly involved in exploiting graduates overseas where they are forced to work 12-hour shifts producing essays for as little as $1 an hour.

As part of the government's crackdown on degree fraud, and to safeguard the international reputation of UK universities, 85 fake UK university websites have been shut down since 2015. Websites have also been found selling fake degree certificates from real universities: a BBC investigation in 2014 found a website selling the University of Kent for £500, which were described as for “novelty purposes, or as a replacement for lost diplomas”. Employers are encouraged to carefully vet the qualifications of any new employees as “The only way to stop these operators is to remove the demand”.

A former Harvard coach accepted $1.5m in bribes in exchange for helping a businessperson get his two sons into the Ivy League school as fencers. They face charges with conspiracy to take bribes under federal programmes. The coach was fired in July 2019 for violating Harvard’s conflict-of-interest policy.

Educating school children and young adults on the subject of corruption on the Seychelles’ three main islands is the aim of a joint project between Transparency Initiative Seychelles (TIS) and the Anti-Corruption Commission Seychelles (ACCS). Other than educating students and pupils, key activities under the project consist of revising the existing Anti-Corruption Act, reinforcing the capacity of the Transparency Initiatives Seychelles and to improve the latter’s advocacy through technical assistance and equipment.