One out of ten lectures in Russia accepts bribes

About 20 percent of Russian parents gave bribes or feel ready to do this to have their children accepted by universities.
43 percent of families faced the problem of bribery when placing their kids to schools, 16 percent are ready to give bribes to universities for enrolling their children there. 

Experts estimate the total sum of bribes (including medical commission fees) for entering universities as 10.6 billion roubles ($400 million). In addition, the same amount of money is paid by students and their parents to “patrons” from high education institutions during the years of studies.

This information was released by provost of the Higher School of Economics Yaroslav Kuzminov at the conference “Economics of Educational System: Results of Second Year of Monitoring”. “Corruption in education is not on such a big scale as in health care system, but is approaching this scale”, he said.

Mr. Kuzminov considers accepting money from a student for passing exam, credit test or having good mark for his/her course paper as the most dangerous form of bribery. According to the monitoring data, ten percent of lecturers accept bribes on a regular basis. “This practice in education is far more dangerous than in health care”, said Mr. Kuzminov. “It demoralizes our lecturers and will bring down the reputation of our education”.

”Corruption in education can be stopped only by increasing lecturers’ salaries. No other measures can help”, said Mr. Kuzminov.

Konstantin Tsaregradsky

Source: Utro.ru