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A Chinese university president was sentenced a lifetime in jail for taking bribes and embezzlement in a court in Southeast Jianxi Province on Tuesday, according to Xinhua. So far this year, 32 university officials have been accused of taking bribes or other. In November, eight school leaders, including the president of the elite Communication University of China in Beijing were removed from their jobs for corruption.

Allegations of corruption and immorality within the Congolese university community have been aired in a new book by a former education minister and current professor of languages at the University of Kinshasa. He proposed lowering student numbers to a controllable level to guarantee efficiency during examinations and academic deliberations.

The recent confession to bribery by, the former admissions director for Renmin University, has called into question the integrity of the Chinese college admission system. The President has been mounting a campaign against corruption in China for more than three years, with higher education as one of the focal points. The ruling Communist Party’s antigraft agency has singled out 32 people working in higher education for investigations this year, with China’s education minister saying that corruption would not be tolerated in the education system.

In India, university fraud is a national sport, practiced at all levels. Beginning with the former prime minister up to the former Delhi justice minister who allegedly fakes his qualification in … law. The increase in fake qualifications is undoubtedly linked to the lack of universities in the country, with some of the harshest selection processes in the world. Leaving the country to study overseas is so expensive that counterfeit diplomas from international universities abound.

The association representing Canada’s university professors has condemned Carleton University’s board of governors for a new policy that will ban board members from speaking publicly about the meetings they attend. The professors say the move is a violation of transparency and openness that is fundamental to academic freedom. The board has also moved to ban faculty and student union representatives from sitting on the board, claiming they are in conflict of interest.

Three Chinese university chiefs have been “named and shamed” for allegedly engaging in illicit acts of “hedonism and dishonesty”. The punishments – the latest example of the Chinese president’s offensive against corruption within the Communist party – were dished out to top officials at the Communication University of China, state media reported on Tuesday. It said two were sacked and another was disciplined.

Having barely recovered from the protests over history curriculum in July, the Ministry of Education finds itself under heat again. This time, over failing to prevent the undue influence of high-ranking officials who serve in positions at private universities right after their retirement. Twenty-one officials who retired from the MOE allegedly assumed positions at private colleges in the past 20 years. Some are said to be receiving lucrative sums in addition to their retirement pensions, while others are said to be well past retirement age.

Several universities are being threatened with tough penalties for allegedly providing data that would artificially boost their performance on prestigious research rankings used to allocate government funding. The Australian Research Council has written stern letters to several universities warning them they face punishments for providing misleading data for their research excellence assessments, including prosecution under Commonwealth law.

Government’s plan to draft in a policy to target qualification fraud is expected to reap positive results for South Africa, including ensuring that South African tertiary institutions are not robbed of the reverence many of them have earned for decades. One of the main benefits would be that CV verification will become standardised, ensuring accuracy and no room for deviation, in both the public and private sectors.