The president and CEO of a private college that catered to foreign students has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for defrauding the Department of Homeland Security by issuing phony visa-related documents to international students in exchange for tuition and fee.

Alberta's auditor-general says Medicine Hat College's international education division has been an out-of-control programme that has put the college at "reputational, legal and financial risk". The Auditor-Generals report released last Tuesday shows a record of irregular contracts, questionable expenses and dubious academic standards for the C$1.7-million programme, which focuses on attracting foreign students from multiple countries, and works in partnership with three Chinese institutions, to offer courses overseas for Chinese students who can then transfer to Medicine Hat College.

Universities determined to rise up international rankings are increasingly "playing" the methodology, Shaun Curtis of the University of Exeter in the UK told the "Worldviews 2013" conference last week. One way is to seek support from colleagues in other institutions who are answering rankings questionnaires, and another is to game the data.

Irish universities have been criticized for being linked to corrupt and unethical regimes. The former head of the Bahrain campus of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) has commented that third-level Irish institutions are "intimately engaged with regimes that have human rights" questions to answer".

Police are investigating an Indian university suspected of issuing fake PhDs after it awarded more than 400 doctorates in a single year. They have arrested four senior officials from CMJ University in the northeastern state of Meghalaya on suspicion of fraud and forgery and are hunting for the chancellor, who has fled.

14 university officials have been investigated for corruption in Jiangxi Province over the past five years, including three university presidents. Due to a huge influx in college admissions, universities nationwide are undergoing massive expansions allowing many opportunities for graft during construction.

According to the President of a University in Perpignan in the department of the Pyrénées-Orientales which has the third highest rate of unemployment in France: "These bogus students have always existed but in the past three years, they are on the increase, partly due to youth unemployment and a lack of financial support for the transition period between school and work ...".

The Department of Education has fined Yale University $165,000 for "very serious and numerous" Clery Act violations, stemming from sex offenses that the Ivy League school failed to report, as well as not properly defining areas where crime statistics could be tabulated. The university has come under increased scrutiny in recent years for the manner in which it deals with sexual offenses that occur on its campus.