Russia to Fight Corruption in Education

Moreover, claims by students that some university professors take bribes for giving out good grades have led to concerns about producing unqualified doctors, lawyers and other professionals.

"The problem of corruption is very acute today," said Yevgeny Bunimovich, a liberal lawmaker in the Moscow city parliament who specializes in education.

The Education Ministry declined to comment on the problem of corruption to The Associated Press, as did the Federal Education Oversight Service. The Prosecutor General's Office said it has no nationwide statistics on education corruption.

But Filipp Zolotnitsky, spokesman for the Moscow police economic crimes department, said some 30 to 40 professors are caught each year in the city accepting bribes in exchange for good grades, and he said there have been about 30 cases of bribe-taking by university admissions staff over the past five years.

"The problem of bribe-taking exists in every sphere _ from the sale of vegetables to universities: where there is demand, there is supply," Zolotnitsky told the AP.

Some professors have been convicted of bribe-taking but most received suspended sentences because of their advanced age, the police official said.

Experts warn, however, that the new test alone will not by itself curb corruption, unless the entire education system is overhauled, salaries for professors and administrations are raised and the ethical standards of academia improved.

Viktor Sadovnichy, the rector of Moscow State University, said he has already seen an advertisement for a service guaranteeing a perfect score on the new test _ for a price.

Valentin Shaulin of the Education Oversight Service said the standardized test has been given on an experimental basis for several years in many provinces. Some regions, he said, have reported incidents of unusually high scores, apparently because of cheating or other violations.

In a reminder of the scale of the problem, the education watchdog's chief said Friday that authorities had suspended the head of the Federal Test Center, the agency that marks school exam papers from all over Russia, after uncovering serious alleged corruption, Interfax reported.

"As far as corruption is concerned it is a systematic illness and I am not convinced that it can be defeated by a single decision," Sadovnichy said.