Balihar Sanghera

Introduction to Methods of Social Research

Nadezhda Romanchuk

ICP 100

December 16^th, 2002

In this article I reveal some structures which generate the most common mal-function of the higher education system in Kyrgyzstan that state university students experience from the moment they seek entrance to the time they graduate. The name to that problem is corruption. Sixty three percent of all UNDP survey participants in Kyrgyzstan responded that corruption is mostly spread in higher education system. What is perhaps more shocking is that, while during the Soviet Union this phenomenon was severely criticized and carefully hidden, in Kyrgyzstan today it is perceived as normal. This is even more regretful in that what people absorb through education will guide them during their whole life.

Corruption is a universal thing. It exists in developed and developing countries, in private and public sectors, and even in non-profit and charitable organizations. According to the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary corruption is "a departure from what is pure or correct". And bribery is coined along corruption. It encompasses abuses not only by the government, but also abuse by public and private sectors. The issue of corruption is hotly debated today, but when talking about this phenomenon most people think about political and economic spheres completely forgetting the presence of corruption in our daily lives. People in Kyrgyzstan have grown very accustomed to corruption in the past few years. Report of the UNDP "Corruption in Kyrgyzstan" shows that every fourth inhabitant of the country thinks that Kyrgyzstan is the most bribable country, and one third of the respondents noted that corruption and weakness of governmental institutions have become main obstacles for economic reforms. In Kyrgyzstan corruption has influenced almost every part of life: government, judicial system, customs, police, hospitals, education. Today it is almost impossible to find a person who has never fixed a passing mark on the exam or a favorable result in a court of law for himself. Bribery in our country became very persuasive and constitutes the invisible social geography. Bribery culture has developed once unsaid rules of life had been understood. In such a culture the act of bribery becomes a ‘natural’ way of acquiring something. When services or goods are difficult to obtain, bribery flourishes. When I talk about corruption in education I mean students paying bribes for getting good grades and receiving diploma; professors and even educational institutions using students for their profits.

In his working paper "Corruption in Empirical Research" Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff reviews causes and consequences of corruption. In a section on salaries he examines the influence of low wages on the level of corruption. In the poorest countries, often those with corrupt elite, there is a manifest failure by the government to pay a living wage to public servants. Indeed, frequently the state is wholly unable to afford to do so. This insufficient remuneration for public officials is widely regarded as being a contributing cause of corruption. However, the answer is much more complex than a single increase in wages. The author points out that we should "acknowledge the existence of more indirect effect, the impact of which might be even larger". In this article I will examine other structural mechanisms, such as low professionalism, students reluctance to take a learning effort, lack of state financing, and even role of employers in the system of state education, which entail bribery.

In the second part of the article "Research Design and Techniques" I will talk about methods of gathering data and problems and limitations I faced while conducting my research. In the third part of the article I’m going to analyze the collected data and draw some findings, which will be summed up in the last part of the paper.

I started my research by choosing people to be interviewed. I decided to interview those who are by and large involved in corrupt practices in universities – instructors and students, and also to get the opinion on this topic from some government officials, possible employers of graduates, and ordinary citizens of Bishkek. I was able to contact the main participants of my research, students, through networking, and they gave me the names of instructors known or unknown for their corrupt practices. Other interviewees were randomly selected. The research was based on detailed qualitative and semi-structured interviews in order to give interviewees more room for expression. Students were selected on the basis of their place and year of study, age, and the experience of giving and taking bribes.

I knew about nervousness of students on the issue of confidentiality, so in the beginning of every interview I ensured every student about anonymity and discretion of their universities, and departments and said that the information would be used just for my university research paper, but students were still reluctant to reveal very sensitive cases on the issue of corruption. I don’t think that they were afraid that I use this information somewhere else, it is just that they were ashamed of what they had done in order to get grades and cared about my perception of them, despite the fact that they were total strangers to me. I never asked the names of interviewees, and all the names in this research project are invented.

The main problem I faced was interviewing lecturers. I was given names of many instructors, but after interviewing two of them I decided to stop there. The problem is that I asked lecturers very sensitive issues, to which I was not getting honest answers. I was told by students about lecturers who are known for taking bribes, and tried to interview them, but they were reluctant to talk about their relationship with "clients" in survey interviews, especially to confess their own gift or bribe-taking. They both said that they heard about such practices functioning in other universities, but denied bribe taking in their own place. They didn’t admit bribery probably because they wanted to maintain a good image of themselves and university, to protect their jobs and their own backs.

I had some limitations to my research. First and the most important limitation was the lack of time. Three months would probably be enough to successfully and fully complete the project, but due to other university courses and my job that period of time was not enough. Corruption resources is another limitation. I haven’t found any books on corruption in AUCA libraries, and had to use Internet sources for the information on corruption theories. Almost nothing has been published on corruption in education in Kyrgyzstan, so my article is mainly based on my own research.

The majority of universities and professors are into a bribery scandal: they sell exams to students and turn everything they can into material gains. It is known practice for senior year students to be asked by the professor to collect money from other students in exchange for excellent grades on the exam. Altinay Sadykova, a fourth-year medical student has a real-life experience of corruption in higher education. When entering the university she had illegally paid bribes in order to be admitted, she was told by other students of the same university that she wouldn’t be accepted even if she passed her entrance exams with excellent grades. At the university Altinay, as well as many others, has become a regular customer: she gets what she pays for, 200 soms for a grade of "A". Bribes are also receivable in kind: for example are university professor asks students in his class to provide him with a sack of potatoes or sugar if they want to successfully pass the oral examination.

Another interviewed student, whose father is a director of a building company, received an "A" grade for renovation works on the professor’s house.

Both students and university staff agree that bribery has found an enduring home where salaries are lowest: education and health services. It is argued that when the staff is unable to meet their minimal living costs from their salaries, corruption will always be prevalent. On average, university lecturers earn between US $20-40, while rectors receive $60. All interviewed students named low wages as being the main reason pushing university staff to bribe. The reply of one of the students was:

said the director of the institution in one of the state universities.

Kyrgyzstan has 60 universities with different structural divisions and branches in various regions of the country. Temir Sariyev, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Kyrgyz Republic in the interview said that a big number of universities is the reason of low professional instructors and corruption:

According to students there are also professors in universities who don’t accept bribes at all. They described those professors as being more professional and holding higher positions or expecting certain promotions. It can be concluded that not only low salaries force university instructors to bribe, but also the level of professionalism is a very important aspect influencing the temptation of professors and lecturers to accept bribes. Of course, low salaries and lack of professionalism can provide a powerful incentive for the university staff to become corrupt but they only form part of the environment in which corruption flourishes. The incidence of corruption depends more crucially on other aspects, which I will examine below.

Corruption in universities occurs not only for personal gains of lecturers, professors and students, but also at a bigger level, that is for the gains of the whole institution. A major contributor to corrupt practices is the state itself, principally when it simply fails to pay its bills. 40 out of 60 universities in Kyrgyzstan are state-owned and are financed by the government, and the state is unable to provide the funds for even the simple maintenance of university buildings. So universities have to get money elsewhere. The director of the institute at one of Bishkek universities said the following:

Students say that lists are circulated which define the price for grades and even include the price for diplomas, which is as high as several thousand US dollar, and this is in the country where the average salary in cities is about 35-40 dollars per month.

All interviewed students said that the material need of their instructors is the basic factor of corruption flourishing in every branch of higher education. In this section I want to analyze how students themselves contribute to the corruption practices.

Using bribe to make a grade has apparently become a common practice at many of Bishkek’s large universities, colleges, and institutes. During the Soviet Union students studied for free at all schools of higher education and received stipends, which covered costs for room and other expenses. Nowadays, only 20 percent of the students in almost all state universities have scholarships and don’t pay for their education. Other 70 percent, faced with a lack of state financing and difficult financial situation of their families, are compelled to work finding very little time to study.

Olga Sergeeva, a third-year law student at one of the well-known universities in Bishkek, is afraid that she will have hardships passing the upcoming exam session at the end of the month. She said that her grades this semester were not good because she was working two jobs in order to support herself and her family. Now Olga is going to do something that she has already done before – offer bribes to almost all her teachers in order to pass examination tests that she would otherwise fail.

To a question why she doesn’t leave the school and simply work Olga answered:

Kyrgyzstan’s law requires that all healthy males who reached the age of 18 should go into the military. Only students who have military practice in their universities are exempted from this law. Some of interviewed male students entered universities in fear of mandatory military service. They don’t have a real incentive to study and therefore have to offer cash to teachers in a desperate attempt to avoid being expelled and subsequently drafted into Kyrgyzstan’s poorly funded and abusive army.

says a first-year biology major male student. The average price that students pay for the grade "A" ranges from 150 to 200 soms for a test, and from 500 and up for an exam.

Some lazy and rich students bribe their professors for grades. But the corruption in most Bishkek universities isn’t limited to students bribing teachers. Many students turn to other sources in order to have their senior theses ready without much effort.

confessed one interviewee. Here is where the problem comes in. Corruption in education has a growing impact on the young generation. Today more and more young people believe that money is more important than individual learning effort and intellectual capacities. It looks like that nowadays students get into schools of higher education not seeking the real knowledge, but their main goal is to receive a desired diploma. 10 out of 12 interrogated students see a diploma as a ticket to a better and wealthier life.

said a fourth-year philosophy student Kanybek. Students, who don’t wish to study, can buy their grades or even a diploma. People in hospitals buy health and expert knowledge about it, which doesn’t exist, because nowadays many young doctors get their diplomas and specializations by bribing professors.

said a 52 years-old resident of Bishkek.

Corruption in universities will continue to flourish as long as universities don’t encourage education itself. Only when students start to see that education is itself important and not just received in order to find a good job or avoid military service, the level of bribes will decrease.

But, fortunately, not all students see university education as a means to an end. Anvar, a third-year international relations student said that he has never paid a bribe at his university and thinks that this practice is undermining the level of professionalism of young specialists in Kyrgyzstan:

I wanted to find out why with such a wide spread of corruption in education those who don’t want to give and those who don’t want to accept bribes do not bring out this issue. I found out that there are a lot of complaints from students who write unsigned letters of such cases, but, according to a head of the studies department of a state university, "anonymous complaints cannot be the basis for administrative investigation". According to him the university is not a police department and cannot do anything except for talking to students and instructors suspected of bribery, and by punishing few lecturers and students the problem of corruption is not going to be solved. Bribery is very common at all campuses and became an unspoken procedure that most students know about.

said one of the students. If a student put money in a scorebook and professor refuses to take it then the student claims that they money were put there by mistake, and such bribery attempts are not penalized.

While one professor insists that if professors earned decent salaries and students received stipends or scholarships the problem of corruption in higher educational institutes would disappear, some students believe that the present system suits everyone and that both professors and students benefit from it and do not wish to change it.

In the middle of my research I came to a very interesting and an important finding that today for students the diploma is more important than the education itself is because of employers who choose their employees not according to their qualifications. Such students graduate from university and begin to work. Later they become doctors in hospitals, deputies passing laws, teachers at schools, lawyers judging people, and the whole society is going to depend on them. According to the director of juridical department of one of the banks in Bishkek

Nowadays higher educational institutes in Kyrgyzstan is a place which is represented by 2 structures working in different directions: corrupt instructors against honest and professional lecturers, students "studying" for diploma against students who actually value learning effort and intellectual capacities. This article has examined why the corrupt structure work in one way rather than the other way. It is argued that poor salaries below the level of "living wages" lie at the heart of corruption. Increase the salaries and the problem will be cured? Of course, as we have seen, the pressures on a public servant to abuse his or her office are greater if they are living near or below the poverty line. However, the evidence is at best unclear whether increasing public sector wages alone can reduce corruption. A deeper look at the state universities’ specific data doesn’t support the notion that merely increasing official salaries to existing staff in corrupt agencies would help. However, this is not to say that increasing public sector wages is not an important factor in reducing corruption. Low wages along with students’ unwillingness to value knowledge itself, universities’ failure to encourage learning effort, lack of state financing, reluctance to take action, and employers who choose their employees not according to their qualifications but rather kinship ties and the presence of diploma, all together contribute to the growth of corruption in education. While some think that corruption in universities is something to worry about, others believe that the present system is very beneficiary for both lecturers and students, and are not interested in changing it. And it looks like that it is not in government’s interest to solve this problem either. The only attempt was made this summer by the former reformist education minister Camilla Sharshekeyeva, who worked out a new system around a nationwide exam. The allocation of scholarships this fall was supposed to be based on the results of this exam, and would eliminate bribery in education that has become very common when students seek the admission. However, many rectors at universities opposed this change. Sharshekeyeva was fired just fifteen days before the test was given. "I wanted to see the looks on the faces of the young people who got into university without paying any money," said Camilla. She hoped that her reform would be carried on by her successor, but looks like the new education minister is not in a hurry to make any changes.

It can be said in the conclusion that the progress in higher education in Kyrgyzstan should be of great concern to all who wish well for the future of the republic. Diplomas and degrees, which are awarded in the country, should be honestly obtained and of genuine quality if Kyrgyzstan is to enter the international academic community. We face challenges of preparing fundamental changes in the system of education. The development of education is an important factor in country’s economic, social, and cultural progress. If people are poorly educated from what the prosperity of the state to originate?

Ilibezova E., Ilibezova L., Asanbaev N., Musakojaeva G., UNDP Report: Corruption in Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek:2000, http://www.nobribes.org/Documents/KyrgyzstanSurvey_1of4.doc

Johann Graff Lambsdorff, Corruption in Empirical Research, Nov, 1999, www.transparency.org/working_papers/lambsdorff/lambsdorff_eresearch.html

Kyrgyzstan: Focus on the Effects of University Proliferation, report of November 5, 2001, http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=12841

Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10^th edition, (Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, USA, 1993), p. 261

Robert G. Kaiser, Difficult Times for a Key Ally in Terror War: Kyrgyzstan’s Politics, Economy in Turmoil, Washington Post, Monday, August 5, 2002, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43561-2002Aug4?language=printer