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The issue of quality assurance in the tertiary education system has become a public concern as a consequence of the scandal in which the president of the National Accreditation Commission and at least two chancellors of private universities were arrested and accused of money laundering, bribery and accepting kickbacks.

Foreign universities offering degrees in Kenya without accreditation will be fined at least Sh10 million and their promoters sent to jail for three years under a new law meant to safeguard education standards. The Commission on University Education (CUE) will replace the Commission of Higher Education in overseeing university standards.

The former president of Chile's National Accreditation Commission (NCA) and two former university rectors have been jailed on charges of bribery and money laundering. They will spend at least six months in prison, which is how long the Public Prosecution Office has said it will take to investigate the charges.

India's education ministry appears to have hit a snag in its anticorruption campaign. The Supreme Court ordered the federal government to conduct a review of 44 "deemed universities" that the ministry had stripped of university status last February.

The National Council for Higher Education has ordered the closure of Luweero University and Central Buganda University (CBU). The council also says Namasagali and Fairland Universities have up to December to improve their facilities or face closure. The council's deputy executive director said they had written to the Inspector General of Police to effect the closure. "Luweero University and CBU are illegal and any student who goes there does so at his or her own risk. The council does not recognise them as universities and we have requested the Police to close them down." Both Luweero and CBU have over 2,000 students studying Business Administration, Social Work and Social Administration as well as Computer Science.

From 1995 to 2001, Nigerian degree mills produced annually about 15 percent of total university graduates in the country. In the past 9 years, a flurry of activity has been directed at eradicating the degree mills. In 1999, the National Council on Education (NUC) directed the closure of all local and foreign satellite campuses. It also partnered with the Department of State Services (Nigeria's secret service) in locating, arresting, and prosecuting operators of unapproved universities and satellite campuses. Finally, it directed approved universities to make full disclosure of their programs, which have been listed in the Directory of Approved Programmes in the Nigerian University System.

The question of who in Government that gave the so-called "fake" St. Luke Medical School the permission to operate as a medical school in Liberia is now a puzzle. The Ministry of Health, the Social Welfare and the Medical Board that should have some ideas about the function of this school, have all backed-off and threatening to prosecute the founder. The reported illegal operation of the school was discovered two months ago when it was raised alarm concerning awarding degrees on the internet.

Graduates of a radiology-technology program in Kentucky have sued the institution, claiming that it lied about the program's accreditation status. The institution's three-year radiology-technology program costs about $33,000 to complete, and is still not accredited by the proper organization, the Joint Review Committee on Education in Radiologic Technology. Nine students have graduated from the program, and 75 are currently enrolled. Without accreditation, students cannot take the national licensing exam and earn the proper credentials for employment.