By MARIA DANILOVA
The Associated Press
Friday, February 2, 2007; 5:20 PM
MOSCOW -- When Yelena's son was preparing for admission exams for a top communications institute, school officials hinted he might not get in unless she offered them a little "reward."
She and her family scraped together the required $4,000 bribe, and her son was admitted.
"I knew that other parents would pay, and if I didn't do the same my son would not get in," said Yelena, a 52-year-old Muscovite who declined to give her last name out of fear of compromising her son's studies.
The payment of bribes for admission and grades at universities and professional institutes has become endemic in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. And critics worry that this form of corruption _ which police and experts say is a growing problem _ is further eroding the quality of a cash-strapped educational system that once ranked among the world's finest.
In an effort to curb these practices, Russia's parliament on Friday approved a plan to introduce a nationwide, standardized multiple choice test for high school seniors _ the equivalent of the SAT, which would substitute for written and oral admission exams that now leave room for subjective grading _ and bribes.
"Obviously, it should make it more objective _ there will be less influence on the part of university admission staff: you show your score and that's it," said Vladimir Yefimov, an official at the education committee in the State Duma, the parliament's lower house.
The testing requirement is expected to come into force in 2009.
The problem of corruption has apparently worsened at all levels of government since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. The global anti-corruption group Transparency International estimates that the level of graft has jumped as much as sevenfold since 2001.
Experts say corruption penetrated education as a result of the country's post-Soviet economic crises, when salaries for professors and staff plummeted and often were paid late.
Wages remains dismally low at the state schools that make up most of Russia's higher educational system. Moscow State University, widely regarded as Russia's top school, pays average salaries of between $470 and $980 a month to professors, a spokeswoman said.
Universities provide free education to most students, so raising tuition for the few who pay would not solve the problem.
In the Soviet era, some students were able to get into good schools thanks to their parents' connections. But the system largely rewarded achievement, giving talented but underprivileged students access to top universities. Such students still have a chance in Putin's Russia, but complaints are rising that even the gifted are being forced to bribe their way into college.
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.