Krasnodar, 16 May – Yug Times. In late April, a loud scandal broke at the Belorechensk branch of the Adyghean State University: the director and secretaries of the acceptance board were found to be selling graduation diplomas to anyone who would pay for that.
According to their arrangement, when an entrant came to enter the University, he or she would be offered enrolment without entrance exams – for some remuneration, of course, which could be either given in cash or transferred to a bank card.
Then the director would formalise all credits and exams as if passed by the enrolee, and issued a graduation diploma with all stamps and signatures attached to it. The press service of the Investigation Directorate in Krasnodar region of the Russian Investigative Committee was quoted as saying that “with respect to the director of the branch and her subordinates, a pre-trial restrain has been imposed by court.”
News of arrests of corrupted university teachers is not a rare thing in Russia. Bribes are a frequent phenomenon in different schools. The corruption market begins with the enrolment, continues with fees of passing the exams and ends with entering a PhD course and defending a dissertation. Often, loud scandals affect the ratings of the schools.
“The types of corruption scandals may vary – consequently, their impact upon the reputation of certain higher schools may also vary. Sometimes – most often, in bigger schools – the detection and suppression of the corruption factor may be evidence of a well-coordinated work of the university management. Of course, it may also prove the existence of systemic problems in a concrete school – but this is a rarer phenomenon. Such problems will continue to occur – so local phenomena should not be extrapolated to the entire system,” Grigori Kiselev, political strategist and director of the Centre for political research and technologies, says.
“The level of higher education provided in Krasnodar region and Adyghea may be assessed as high. The regional higher schools regularly top the lists of federal ratings of Russian universities, and there are no grounds not to trust these ratings,” Mr. Kiselev adds. Certainly, for a contemporary employer their future employee’s diploma is an important thing – however it cannot guarantee the needed level of qualification. Trust to diplomas may be revived provided the development of an independent assessment of professional skills and correspondence of the record in the independent assessment certificate with the diploma.
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