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 Cal State LA student allegedly denounced the actions of her classmates in a discussion forum on Canvas. Using the GroupMe app, students participated in cheating such as sharing answers and taking credit for the work of others. According to the Vice president for student life and dean of students, the University investigates all alleged acts of dishonesty and will hold students accountable if found responsible.

The Austrian minister of labour resigned from her cabinet post after allegations that her university work was fraudulent. An expert in academic fraud detection reported that her 2006 master’s thesis displayed “plagiarism, incorrect quotations and lack of knowledge of the German language”. More than a fifth of the text in the thesis she submitted last May at the Technical University of Bratislava, had been taken from other sources without quotes, including an article in Forbes magazine.

The number of suspected cheating cases at Oxford University rose from 26 in March to 55 in October 2019. The figures showed that 36 students had been investigated for plagiarism during assessments this year and 19 were suspected of collusion in open-book assessments. An additional six students received zero grade but were allowed to resubmit their piece of work.

The assessment watchdog Ofqual figures for the 2017-2018 academic year show 1,539 penalties for malpractice in vocational qualifications, of which 55 per cent were for students, 39 per cent for staff, and 6 per cent for schools and colleges. There were 606 penalties issued to staff, with the most common offense being “improper assistance to candidates”, which accounted for 75 per cent of all penalties. Only 7 per cent of penalties for staff came in the form of suspensions or bans. In 45 per cent of cases, staff received a written warning, while 41 per cent of the penalties involved further training. The most common type of cheating reported was plagiarism, which accounted for 46 per cent of all student penalties, followed by in the use of mobile phones or other communication devices in exams, accounted for 19 per cent.

According to a report carried out by Universities UK, the Higher education institutions should stop rounding up borderline marks and avoid discounting core or final-year modules. This comes in response to a warning from the Universities Minister that too many institutions felt pressured to lower their admission standards. The report sets out six measures to ensure transparency in the calculation of final grades and calls for a single algorithm to be used to calculate the final grade that the students receive.

There has been an increase in cases of cheating in examinations at several Norwegian universities. 37 cases will be examined at the University of Agder while the University of Tromsø reported that they had encountered more cheating in examinations at the beginning of the year than last year, with 17 cases this year compared to 8 last year.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) reports that the pandemic has demonstrated how innovative and adaptable essay mills marketing could be” by advertising discounts and “suggesting they could fill a gap resulting from a lack of supervision, or even offering essay writing to help students stay safe”. According to QAA, universities must look at how to prevent or catch cheating in the physically distanced assessment.

During online tests, the Ghent University received a warning that cheating had occurred and that students shared correct answers using online channels. After further examination of the evidence, the university declared all four tests invalid including those students who did not cheat. The students responsible for organizing the fraud will be sanctioned, scored zero out of 20, and excluded from any resits.

To guarantee the academic integrity and legitimacy of the evaluations and exams during the health crisis of COVID-19, Madrid Complutense University was able to take advantage of their existing remote digital media. To avoid fraud, the identity of students during oral exams is verified using video-conferencing tools, and access codes are personal and non-transferable. This is done under the oversight of the Computer Services department. For handwritten tests, students send a scanned handwritten text to the University Virtual Campus.