The Cambodian government's Anti-Corruption Unit has been called on to police next month's national school-leaving exam in a bid to stamp out systemic cheating that has for decades compromised the quality of high school students applying for university places.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has detected cases of fraud in the admission process of two international schools. More than a dozen teachers and faculty members from the Younghoon and Daewon International Middle School were found to have tampered with applications to admit unqualified students.

Although Chinese students have been going to America to study for decades, their numbers have grown dramatically in the past few years. Many of them have only a basic knowledge of foreign universities and difficulty making sense of complicated applications. As a result, a huge industry of education agents has arisen in the country to help guide them — and, in some cases, to do whatever it takes to ensure that they are accepted.

Indonesia's top institution made headlines this month when 52 of its prospective students were caught cheating during an entrance test for the international programme of the medical faculty. It is the first time that cheating involving large numbers of students has been detected.

Falsification of report cards to obtain admission into private schools in Kigali is listed as one of the major challenges hampering education quality. Speaking during an education workshop organised by Kigali City Council, an education activist from Power in Education, a local civil society organisation, revealed that a recent survey indicated that over 100 students in various city schools used forged report cards to obtain admission.

The State Board of Higher Education is working to tighten admission policies for international students after an audit found some Chinese student transcripts submitted to Dickinson State University were fakes.

Once comprehensively surveyed, the magnitude and reach of fraud is becoming clear. For example, research suggests that the majority of applications from a number of large student-sending countries are either significantly embellished or outright fraudulent. As a result, tens of thousands of international students, having passed through visa and admissions systems, are enrolled all over the world based on school transcripts, financial support statements, recommendation letters or test scores that are untrue.

The detection of wholesale cheating in college applications is on the rise due to the use of Turnitin for Admissions, an anti-plagiarism database service that compares student essays to an immense archive of other writings. Around the country, more than 100 colleges and universities have adopted it, mainly in graduate divisions, although Stanford University is among the dozen schools starting to use it for freshman applicants this year.

Turkish prosecutors are investigating allegations of possible cheating and favouritism in the annual university entrance exam sat by 1.7 million students on 27 March. Suspicions were raised this week after a lawyer discovered a formula for correct answers for multiple-choice maths questions on one exam.

A cheating scandal discovered among students vying for entrance to some of Japan's top universities has rocked the nation and set off a national soul search over young people and how dishonesty should be dealt with. The cheaters used a web bulletin board to ask questions while university entrance tests were underway.