REFORMED METHODS OF SANCTIONS, INVESTIGATION AND PUNISHMENT TO PREVENT ACADEMIC CORRUPTION, ENDING SEXUAL COERCION AND HARASSMENT IN NIGERIAN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

In our higher institutions, academic corruption is pervasive, and its prevalence has hampered both national progress and educational quality. Thus, the paper examined the issue of academic corruption by using content analysis and secondary sources of information, including internet-based documented materials, among others, with the goal of promoting reforms to the sanctions, investigations, and punishment of academic corruption, which includes collecting money to change students' grades; exchanging grades for sex; extorting money in exchange for typing; paying for grades; writing projects/seminar papers for students and falsification of data/research finding etc. The paper also examined other elements that contribute to academic corruption, such as indiscipline, inadequate oversight of academic staff, leniency in punishing "culprit" lecturers, flawed hiring practices for academic staff, and hiring of incompetent lecturers. The paper suggests that student victims of sexual harassment should be encouraged to speak out with concrete evidence and perpetrators of such acts should be severely suspended and prosecuted in order to end academic corruption or bring it to a barest minimum amidst disturbing cases of sexual coercion and harassment in Nigerian tertiary institutions. It also suggests that Turnitin anti-plagiarism software should be used at all academic levels. The administration of tertiary institutions should safeguard the printing of exam papers, increase the number of invigilators, install CCTV cameras for test monitoring, among other measures. Keywords: Academic Corruption, Sexual Harassment, Investigation, Sanctions.