Pay-for-Ph.D. scandal
The gossip today at WADS concerned the following story: Germany: 100 professors suspected of Ph.D. bribes. As the Associated Press reports, there's an ongoing scandal in which students paid up to 20,000 Euro to a company which promised to help them get their Ph.D. The company then kicked back some part of the money to the faculty who granted the students their degrees. Apparently this involves some 100 German faculty members from many different disciplines, although the article does point out that the suspect faculty are largely not full-time professors; not many details are available due to privacy laws.