The Elephant in the Room: Corruption and Cheating in Russian Universities

This book offers a long overdue account of the vast corruption and cheating practices in Russian higher education, including bribery, financial fraud, clientelism, plagiarism, and exam cheating. Serghei Golunov ruthlessly uncovers the recent social trends that have created a favorable ground for such malpractices and evaluates the efficiency of measures taken against corruption and fraud by various actors. Although corruption and cheating are so widespread the value of most Russian diplomas is in doubt, these problems are prioritized neither by higher education managers nor by foreign actors such as partner universities, participants of the Bologna process, or the authors of global university rankings.