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A federal grand jury in Kansas indicted a former college-basketball coach last month on charges that he arranged for his players to receive phony academic credit and stole $120,000 in Pell Grants. The former coach faces a total of 51 years in prison and over $1.5-million in fines if found guilty of all counts.

The firing of a teacher who helped expose the cheating in last year's matric exams shows that whistle-blowers' rights are badly protected. This despite the promise from the Education Minister to protect those who exposed the cheating. Seven months after the fraud in the Mpumalanga matric exams, the only person who has been penalised is one of the whistle-blowers.

Twenty-two teachers are involved in a multimillion-rand fraud. Provincial education department officials have taken advantage of an offer of amnesty in return for information on the ringleaders. All the teachers would face criminal charges as the amnesty was only for the departmental disciplinary process.

In 2002, the Liberian embassy's deputy chief of mission began his fraudulent transactions with American owners of St Regis diploma mill. They agreed to sell Liberian university accreditation to "St Regis University" for $2,250. They then decide to create two other diploma mills: Robertstown and James Monroe. By the end of 2003, Liberian officials under their sway included senior diplomats in at least two embassies, a minister of justice, a foreign minister, two successive directors of Liberia's National Commission for Higher Education, and a number of other diplomats and government officials, including several at the Ministry of Education. The United States Secret Service finally unveiled their embezzlement.

A member of the commission responsible for the examinations at the end of the first cycle of secondary (BEPC) and 50 other persons have been arrested. According to the police, they stole copies of the tests before the start of the exams. Using new technology, they swiftly copied the questions and put them on sale for students and parents in some areas of the country.

For the very first time in Guinea, professors were suspended by their functions for facts of corruption and the students were condemned to pay a fine or to a prison sentence for fraud in the examinations. During his taking of office, Mr Souaré, Minister of the Higher education and the scientific research - who arises from the labor union of the teachers and which fought in the past against the corruption - had indicated that it would make of the fight against the fraud and the corruption its first priority.

In one hour, and for about 38 dollars, you can get a false university degree in China, but the enforcement of punishment is making it ever more difficult to use such fraud to find a job or get into a foreign university. The measures introduced by China have curbed fraud and many fake degrees are now detected through authentication procedures; however, some genuine diplomas have been awarded to bogus students.

The University of Cauca uncovered what could be trickery in entrance exams to this year's first semester. It stated that the scores of 32 students in both assertive and non-assertive questions closely coincided. Among the doubtful candidates, 18 got into medicine, 4 into nursing, 2 into physiotherapy, and 2 into civil engineering.

Turkey has suspended its recognition of Bulgarian university diplomas. The Turkish University Education Council made this decision on the grounds of high levels of academic forgery, fraud and exam cheating in Bulgaria. Bulgaria's Education Minister has admonished the Bulgarian media for provoking an international scandal, claiming that the problematic diplomas were forged by Turkish citizens.

During the annual conference of the European Association for International Education, an expert stated that fraud in international higher education is a $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion business. He claimed that fraud is a pervasive problem and defined it broadly, situating various forms of it on a spectrum of severity – from resume embellishment, on the low end, to full-scale identity fraud on the high end.