Corruption in former Soviet bloc universities increases, threatens value of higher education

Staff Reports

Graduates of universities in the former Soviet Republic may find their degrees losing value as corruption among higher education programs continues to rise, two Vanderbilt professors found in a study published in the February issue of Comparative Education Review.

The study confirms what many educators had learned anecdotally: Educational corruption in the former USSR and other former communist regimes has increased since the end of the Cold War.

“Education corruption is among the most serious new problems in economic development today,” said Stephen P. Heyneman, co-author of the study along with Kathryn H. Anderson, professor of economics, and Nazym Nuralyeva, lecturer in sociology at a university in Kazakhstan.

Heyneman, professor of international education policy, also presented the results of the article to a meeting of the Kazakhstan cabinet.

“Although educational corruption existed under the Soviet Union, we hypothesize that it was modest by comparison to the level today,” the authors said. Among the immediate problems for the students is that a devalued degree adversely affects their earning power.

Devaluation of degrees has serious international policy implications, degrades the entire social system of those countries and decreases the likelihood that those graduates will be able to improve their economic standing, the researchers said.

Perceived corruption also could jeopardize funding from international development assistance organizations who might rethink their participation.

The study surveyed universities in Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic using the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index for 2005.