More Canadian institutions will face controversy over the influence of donors on programmes if they do not rethink their relationship with private funders, warn academics who have studied the relationship between donations and educational institutions. This is following a string of cases over the past decade that have led academics across the country to criticize postsecondary institutions that appear to be willing to share control over their research agenda with private donors.

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.

The independence of Swiss universities from the corporate world has again been called into question as details of pharmaceutical sponsorship deals were broadcast by Swiss public television, SRF. The programme found evidence that one firm may have manipulated academic research data. SRF research shows financial links between pharma giants and several leading universities. The most damning revelation is that one group demanded to see research every three months and reserved the right to make “acceptable alterations” to results.

German university heads have welcomed proposals by the Stifterverband – a network of foundations, businesses and individuals supporting the country’s higher education and research – for improved transparency in collaborations between universities and industry. The recommendations, issued in mid-April, stress the “responsibility of universities, as autonomous institutions, to regularly and appropriately inform the public about their collaborative projects with industry”.

South Korea’s National Assembly last week focused on the role of the prestigious Ewha Womans University as part of its fourth round of hearings into an influence peddling scandal surrounding embattled South Korean President. Since early December the assembly has held four rounds of hearings, to gather evidence on whether the presidents close confidante used her friendship to influence policy and wrongly secure millions of dollars in funding for her foundations from South Korean conglomerates.

A letter from the Digital Education Director authorizes the use by schools of the digital services of Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon, much to the dismay of the CNIL and the unions. Marks, comments of teaching staff, attendance records ... What if companies or headhunters had such precious "behavioral" data on hand to assess their future recruits? This could be a way to differentiate between two resumes and begin true profiling for positions.

Immediately after the President was elected, borrower advocates and lawmakers expressed concern about what would happen to the current regulations aimed at holding for-profit colleges accountable. On Tuesday, their concerns were validated. The Education Department announced that it would delay and renegotiate two of the previous administration’s signature regulations: the first aims to penalize programs whose graduates’ loan payments exceed a set percentage of their earnings, while the second simplifies the process for borrowers who say they have been defrauded by their colleges.

Before each school year, the Ministry of Education publishes a list of approved textbooks, from which teachers will choose the ones they will use in class. For the 2017-2018 school year, the list is 30 pages long. There is big money in school books, explains a publisher who wants to remain anonymous. "Getting on the list is the Holy Grail, and no holds are barred. Imagine a little, it's a huge market, more than 5 million students! Everyone wants their share of the pie: authors, publishers, printers or distributors, even if the methods they use are not always legal.”

The president-to-be of Taiwan’s top higher education institution had been due to take up his post on 1 February after his selection to the top university position by a university committee in January. However, his taking of office has been delayed after it was revealed in January that he was an independent director of the board of a private company, and that the company’s vice chairman sat on the university selection committee. He has also been subjected to plagiarism allegations relating to a paper he presented at a conference in May 2017, but the university said in late January it would not formally investigate the claims.

The University College London (UCL) has declared that its Centre for Blockchain technologies has recently finalized a pilot program permitting MSc graduates in Financial Risk Management to offer immediate confirmation of the academic qualification via bitcoin. London-based startup Gradbase has developed a platform in which all graduates in 2016-2017 of the above course mention can register their degree credential. The validity of this information is verified by the school and followed by the system providing a transaction approving the genuineness of these degrees through bitcoin.