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After studying for two years to be a teacher, one student found out that the degree her school offers is worthless. It is a story being replayed across many Indian cities. Poorly regulated, unaccredited and often entirely fake colleges have sprung up as demand for higher education accelerates, driven by rising aspirations and a bulging youth population.

Tens of thousands of students in universities across Britain have been caught cheating in exams and coursework – and the trend is on the rise, according to an investigation by The Independent. Over the past three years, more than 45,000 students at 80 institutions have been found guilty of "academic misconduct".

Independent investigations into journalism diplomas awarded at Windesheim University have found that one in four students should not actually have been awarded one. In what is seen as one of the biggest failures of quality assurance in Netherlands higher education, two independent committees that looked into the work of all students who graduated in the past two years concluded that 86 out of 360 students should not have received a diploma.

Bar-Ilan University was fined by the Council of Higher Education for admitting students without bachelor's degrees to graduate programs. The panel ruled that Bar-Ilan will be responsible for financing the undergraduate degrees of students who were enrolled in violation of the Council of Higher Education's guidelines.

Overseas non-governmental organizations have been raising the alarm over worker exploitation in factories in China that produce the Apple iPad and other consumer electronic products. A new report by a Hong Kong-based labour organization has found that many of the exploited are students working as interns as a compulsory part of vocational courses.

Once comprehensively surveyed, the magnitude and reach of fraud is becoming clear. For example, research suggests that the majority of applications from a number of large student-sending countries are either significantly embellished or outright fraudulent. As a result, tens of thousands of international students, having passed through visa and admissions systems, are enrolled all over the world based on school transcripts, financial support statements, recommendation letters or test scores that are untrue.

Claremont McKenna College, a small, prestigious California school, stated that for the past six years, it has submitted false SAT scores to publications like US News & World Report that use the data in widely followed college rankings.