Counterfeiting, fraud and related crimes pose significant challenges to virtually every industry. Listed below are facts and figures that highlight specific challenges that face the higher education sector.
- A study conducted by Christian & Timber involving over 7,000 resumes found 52% of candidates had claimed their partial degrees
- 29% of analyzed student papers show significant plagiarism
- A study by Sweden's National Agency for Higher Education concludes that the number of fake universities worldwide rose from about 200 in 2000 to more than 800 in 2004.
- The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that in 2004 more than a dozen federal agencies had paid a total of more than $169,000 to two unaccredited universities suspected of being diploma mills.It was recently estimated that there were 10,000 holders of fake US degrees in Malaysia.
- In 2003 it was estimated that more than 15 per cent of South Africans obtained their employment using bogus qualifications.
- Fake, realistic diplomas and transcripts from leading institutions are produced by the thousands yearly by “novelty” printers such as http://www.backalleypress.com/.