Search Page

According to the President of a University in Perpignan in the department of the Pyrénées-Orientales which has the third highest rate of unemployment in France: "These bogus students have always existed but in the past three years, they are on the increase, partly due to youth unemployment and a lack of financial support for the transition period between school and work ...".

Egyptian higher education remains in a state of crisis after the 2011 revolution. Internal corruption, a lack of funding and student support and safety are among the factors adversely affecting students and the system. Economic, political, and physical insecurity in the country make it very difficult for serious changes to be made.

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 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.

Accreditors keep hundreds of schools with low graduation rates or high loan defaults alive. Most colleges can’t keep their doors open without an accreditor’s seal of approval, which is needed to get students access to federal loans and grants. But accreditors hardly ever kick out the worst-performing colleges and lack uniform standards for assessing graduation rates and loan defaults.

Universities may attract penalty, including a freeze of grants, if its teachers are found to be guiding more than eight PhD students at any given point in time as part of a drive to plug lacunae in research. The University Grants Commission will ask all universities to have anti-plagiarism software to ensure that the thesis papers reflect genuine research. The step assumes significance against the backdrop of some agencies offering their services to research scholars to draft theses for them for a fee.

A leaked report has revealed “extreme” government concern after an academy trust was found to have paid its chief executive more than £82,000 for 15 weeks’ work. The investigation, which took place over June and July this year, also found that Wakefield City Academy were unable to produce the list of students receiving pupil premium payments (additional funding to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils in schools).