Ethics Newsline®

NEW YORK
A new United Nations report claims that bribery and corruption are damaging education around the world.

The study, authored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), claims that education worldwide is plagued by fraud, bribes, embezzlement, and cheating, reports the BBC.

In developing countries, the siphoning of nonsalary government funds destined for schools — called “leakage” — can be as high as 80 percent.

Theft from supply budgets is particularly high in Africa, according to a summary of the findings from the CanWest News Service, with an estimated 87 percent of government school funding disappearing in Uganda.

Salary embezzlement, often in the form of putting ghost teachers on payrolls, is claimed to be as high as 14 percent of the total payroll in Papua, New Guinea, according to the report.

Cheating was characterized as an endemic problem in India, reports the Times of India, with UNESCO alleging that “in some places in India, cheating is now so well established that when universities try to resist, students protest and demand their traditional right to cheat.”

Selling of phony degrees was cited as a problem in much of the developed world, including the United States.