A top southern Italian university was hit by a corruption scandal on Thursday, with the arrest of six people including two lecturers accused of selling degree exams and theses.
Police said economics and finance students at Bari University passed exams given by the two lecturers in exchange for up to 3,000 euros in a scam that had been going on since at least 2005.
The cost of a thesis - the concluding part of a degree course - would set students back 1,800-2,650 euros, with the lecturers simply selling old theses that were dug up from the university archives, police said.
Police said their investigations showed that over one eight-month period, the six suspects had been able to reap a total of 50,000 euros from their illicit activities.
Besides the lecturers, police arrested four economy faculty assistants.
The suspects face a range of charges, including corruption, extortion and abuse of office.
Investigators said they had uncovered at least 57 cases of students, including foreign ones, who had 'bought' their exam grades.
In one case, a student was found to have forked out 15,000 euros to get through a series of exams and collect his degree.
One of the lecturers placed under arrest is accused of coercing students into taking a special maths course with him costing 3,500 euros, giving them to understand that this would be their only way of passing their exams.
It is not the first time that professors at Bari University have been hit by corruption charges.
Last year, several staff on the medical faculty were accused of setting up a system to send certain students text messages on their mobiles containing answers to exam questions.
Outgoing University and Research Minister Fabio Mussi praised police for their work in uncovering the corruption.
He said the government would continue its bid to ensure that Italian universities were ''free of corruption and bribery''.
