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Three Georgia women and an Alabama man pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the US Department of Education’s Federal financial aid programs worth millions of dollars. According to the Justice Department, they admitted enrolling people who were not eligible to attend college and completing financial aid applications using fake students’ names; they also did fake students’ homework and exams and manipulated grade requirements to continue qualifying for Federal financial aid.

The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) has booked eight persons, including four former employees of the varsity and four private persons for criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, and falsification of accounts. While perusing the details of registration and tuition fees of 16,580 students, the DVAC officials found that the serial number of one demand draft was used multiple times against several students.

The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority has filed a charge sheet at the Special Court against 11 people for embezzling a huge amount of money from the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) to conduct training programmes for teachers. The school administration and CTEVT officials colluded to embezzle state funds by submitting fake bills, including for never conducted trainings.

Two employees at the Higher Education Students’ Loans and Grants Board (HESLGB) have been arrested in Lilongwe for allegedly stealing through a private university, MWK335 million (US$326,000) meant for student loans between 2018 and 2019. Failing to pay rent and provide loans to students at the tertiary institutions, the university made a proposal to the board for a donation of MWK10 million (US$9,750). The board instead sent MWK300 million and asked the university to return the additional money to various accounts belonging to employees at the loans board.

The Anti-Corruption Commission has charged five members and an executive director of the North South University (NSU) board of governors with abuse of power, increasing their allowances to ten times the approved rate, and buying luxury cars at the expense of students. For more than a decade, NSU has offered several Bachelor of Business Administration programmes without University Grants Commission approval. According to an investigator, NSU was allowed to enrol 50 students in approved BBA programmes, but it enrolled about 2,700 students in one semester.

The US Attorney’s Office arrested a nurse practitioner on federal charges of wire fraud, financial aid fraud and aggravated identity theft. She used doctors’ pedigree information and forged signatures to certify disability diagnoses that got more than $10.5 million in loans discharged for at least 125 people. She defrauded the federal Department of Education's Total and Permanent Disability discharge program, which relieves the student loans of those who suffer from permanent physical or mental disabilities.

Chung Chou University of Science and Technology (CCUT) has been forcing students from Uganda to work in factories for long hours to pay off debts they incurred since they did not receive the promised scholarships. The university had been under observation for quality issues since 2015 so this new element persuaded the advisory commission on private schools to ask the Ministry of Education for tougher sanctions against CCUT which is no longer allowed to recruit any new students, whether foreign or domestic.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission’s investigation reveals that 10 national universities in South Korea allegedly misappropriated KRW9.4 billion of students’ tuition fees. The funds were intended to cover student guidance programmes and safety activities carried out by professors and staff during lunch hours, after work or on weekends. Employees at one of the national universities overstated the number of such activities by changing locations and clothes earning KRW1.2 billion.