The post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination or post- gives universities a second chance to screen prospective students who have come through the national matriculation examination system. Earlier this year, the Education Minister announced that the government had lifted a ban imposed in June 2016 on the post-UTME. But the Ministerwarned against institutions charging exorbitant fees for the exam and directed the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board or JAMB to compile a list of institutions charging above NGN2,000 (US$5.50), according to a local media report.

Ways in which students cheat are either ingenious or surprisingly obvious. Why do students cheat, and risk having to retake a module, having their degree classification lowered, or even being kicked out of university? There are many reasons – including financial pressure, poor organisational skills and panic – sometimes among young people who should never have gone to university in the first place or, at the very least, who should have had more support structures in place when they started.

A 23-year-old man, residing a stone's throw from Lyon, was arrested on Tuesday morning, 3 October, for trying to fool the higher education scholarship system. During the 2016-2017 school year, the young man had received government money based on the establishment he claimed to be attending the conditions he had declared. The problem was that the student had falsified his university registration document, and Crous, which manages student grants, came to realize it.

As the University of KwaZulu-Natal medical school’s places for sale saga develops, more information has emerged regarding the alleged syndicate’s national links to other universities. The Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) said this week that they were following up on the observations from the UKZN investigation, implicating certain individuals associated with SMU. SMU’s investigation follows the arrests in Durban of three individuals alleged to have been selling places to study medicine and other health science courses at UKZ for a fee of up to R500 000.

According to a confidential report, Kenya’s universities are facing serious management challenges resulting in admission flaws, inadequate staffing, and low standards of examination administration, supervision and research. The report also shows that some institutions cut corners to increase admissions in order to seal budgetary gaps, allow students to graduate within months, or admit students to unaccredited programmes from which they are then allowed to graduate. After returning their reports with factual corrections done, the institutions in question will have 30 days to issue corrective roadmap.

A NSW government minister has launched a blistering attack on the federal government's administration of the scandal-ridden private vocational education sector. The sector has been plagued by allegations of dodgy private providers recruiting tens of thousands of students through free laptops and targeting illiterate, disabled students to sign them up to tens of thousands of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded student debt through the federal government's HECS-style VET-FEE help program.

The Education ministry is investigating a number of schools for allegedly inflating enrolment figures in a bid to unduly benefit from free learning cash. The Cabinet Secretary warned that appropriate action would be taken against individuals involved in the scandal, saying such a practice is a criminal offence punishable by law. The Auditor-General’s report on the Ministry of Education’s financial statements for the 2013/2014 financial year says the government had lost millions of shillings of capitation funds in public schools through inflated enrolment figures.

The President has ordered an audit of how public primary and secondary schools have spent the billions in free learning cash released to them across three years. Free Primary Education funds were first rolled out in 2003, with each child getting Sh1,020 per year. In 2014, the Jubilee government increased FPE to Sh1,420 to cater for an estimated enrolment of about 10 million children in about 23,000 public primary schools. Annually this costs Sh14 billion.

The Minister of Primary and Secondary Education last week slammed the parents for paying Form One entrance examination fees saying they did that at their own peril as the Government has set an enrolment date for all the schools in the country. He said the entrance exams were banned long back by his ministry and have remained illegal and should not be left to continue. Enrolment of Form One students for next year started yesterday with parents expected to use their children's Grade Seven results.

The president and CEO of a private college that catered to foreign students has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for defrauding the Department of Homeland Security by issuing phony visa-related documents to international students in exchange for tuition and fee.