The heads of some of Russia’s most prestigious educational establishments yesterday admitted that students use surrogates (代理人) to gain entry to top institutes, whose qualifications are a passport to lucrative jobs.
The surrogate students are only the latest symptom of an epidemic of corruption that has gripped the Russian higher education system. A report published this week by the Ministry of Education and Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE) showed that more than $300m was paid in bribes to enter the country’s educational establishments last year. A direct bribe to lecturers to enter an institution can be up to $30000 for a top law faculty, the HSE estimates.
"In our school alone this spring we caught four impostors who were attempting to sit the entrance tests in place of others, " said Grigory Kantorovich, deputy head of the HSE. "Those were not isolated cases; it’s a whole, specialised business. "
Such corruption is multiplied by a burgeoning market in coursework and diplomas written by teachers and lecturers, which can be bought over the Internet.
A police spokesman said there was no dedicated unit for tackling corruption in education, but individual cases were investigated if evidence was handed over.
