Goolam Mohamedbhai of the Center for International Higher Education writes about them in a column published in Inside Higher Ed. The examples include: recruiting unqualified foreign students in Australia, plagiarism and made-up source references in South Africa, and selling grades, and even degrees, in Russia.
Those pale before what Mohamedbhai calls the “Vyapam scam.” Vyapam is the agency that conducts exams for university admittance in Madhya Pradesh, India. Apparently, the recent fraud was perpetrated by “politicians, businessmen, senior officials and some 2,500 impersonators taking exams in the name of weaker students. More than 2,000 people have been arrested. Worse, tens of people directly involved in the scam have died, some in suspected cases of murder and suicide.”
For an American student, sometimes admission to a college feels like a life-and-death matter. If Mohamedbhai is right, in at least one place in the world, it is.