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British medical authorities acknowledged on Monday that they were checking the credentials of some 3,000 foreign physicians after one was convicted of fraud and accused of falsifying qualifications. A physician used a qualification from her native New Zealand for more than two decades which enabled her to treat patients suffering from dementia and an array of other psychiatric complaints. However, in recent weeks, an investigation by a provincial newspaper uncovered a very different version of her background.

According to Slovak media the Speaker of the Slovakian Parliament has been accused of having copied his JuDR doctoral thesis in law from five other sources. The politician put his thesis in the university library under embargo, when the accusations first arose. Comenius University announced that a doctoral dissertation with the same title and same number of pages was missing in its university archive and that an enquiry has been launched.

Amid a period of growth for the higher and further education sectors, with some institutions investing millions of pounds in new building projects and developments, officers want to highlight how organizations can be left vulnerable to the risk of money laundering, fraud, and cybercrime. Institutions also have a duty to ensure that workers in the supply chain are not being exploited as victims of human trafficking.

Apparently, degrees from Aberdeen University and Robert Gordon University can be obtained for as little as £200, complete with university emblems and gold seals. It has emerged that copies of RGU degrees even contained faked signatures. Other institutions being targeted include St Andrews University, Glasgow University, and Edinburgh University. The information has come to light after a Sunday newspaper claimed that one website sold over 3,000 fake qualifications from various education establishments to UK-based buyers between 2013 and 2014. These included degrees, doctorates, and PhDs.

Council of Europe and the European Union are assisting Serbian authorities in order to improve the quality of education through applying preventive mechanisms based on Council of Europe standards and practices. The actions is being implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Education, while involving a wider group of stakeholders, including public universities, the Anti-Corruption Agency, education policy and research institutes, NGOs and academics. 

YouTube stars are being paid to sell academic cheating, a BBC investigation has found. More than 250 channels are promoting EduBirdie, based in Ukraine, which allows students to buy essays, rather than doing the work themselves. YouTube said it would help creators understand they cannot promote dishonest behaviour. The BBC Trending investigation uncovered more than 1,400 videos with a total of more than 700 million views containing EduBirdie adverts selling cheating to students and school pupils.

The number of students caught cheating at the UK’s top universities has shot up by a third in three years, with experts warning that institutions are ignoring the problem. A senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London and one of the UK’s leading experts on essay cheating, said: “A growing number of young people also feel more pressure than ever before, often turning to cheating to help them get through their degrees. It’s also easier to access websites that offer paid-to-order essays”.

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.

Allegations of academic fraud have been made against nearly 20 alternative higher education providers in London in recent months, the head of the UK’s standards watchdog has said. Warning that fraud and malpractice now pose a “real challenge” to traditional quality assurance in higher education, the chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency, said that his organisation had “recently received and, in some cases, investigated allegations about admissions, malpractice, academic fraud and the falsification of evidence in 19 alternative providers in London”.