Don't take for granted the quality of education in North American, or European Universities! From everything I have seen here, it is very common to copy other peoples work and put your own name on it. The local university student publication produces a copy of their periodical in English. The cover story of one issue was about plagiarism. The whole article was, itself, copied from the internet!
I have also heard from graduate students that in order to graduate, they must pay their supervisor a tidy sum of cash. Some have told me up to the equivalent of ten grand in US$.