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The massification of higher education in Ukraine is a fact, while financing the system is still an issue. External pressures from the central government and the market require changes in university governance. Europeanization of the educational system and adherence to the principles laid down by the Bologna Declaration add to already existing challenges faced by universities. This paper offers classification, typology, and portrayal of the higher education landscape in Ukraine, and elaborates on the complex intertwinement of state and higher education institutions. It considers universities as collegiums and bureaucracies, and suggests the university political system as a viable form of organizational structure for the task of reforming universities.

This study analyses the issue of comparative corruption in the national higher education sectors in the United States of America (USA) and the Russian Federation (RF). Corruption in higher education, as well as the way it is addressed in legislation and court cases and reflected in the media, appears to be consistent with the trajectory and pace of reforms that take place in the USA and the RF. The continuing massification of higher education, with increasing enrolment rates in both countries, as well as the emergence of the for-profit sector, necessitate more control and coordination on the part of the governments, educational institutions and the public. The two systems of higher education slowly and independently converge. In both systems, professional hierarchies based on meritocracy clash with managerialism based on the thriving for-profit principle. As a result, forms of corruption in higher education may become more similar.

This paper addresses the issue of "dissertations for sale" in Russia. The tasks of this anthropological study include establishing the problem of corruption in doctoral education, identification of the dissertations suppliers, study of the specific services they offer, analysis of their prices on different services, and generalizations of findings in the context of the educational system. All of these tasks address the supply side of the dissertations market. This paper identifies a total of 169 firms that offer dissertations for sale in Russia. It concludes that the cost of the dissertations market extends far beyond its monetary expression. Fake doctorates undermine the credibility of real, earned doctorates, and erode the gold standard of quality in research and scholarship. (Contains 2 tables.)

Corruption in higher education is known but not described theoretically. Decentralization and privatization of higher education and the increasing scale and scope of corruption in higher education in the former Soviet Bloc, as well as numerous other countries, urges better understanding of the problem within the context of socio-economic transformations as it touches upon issues of access, quality, and equity. This article presents an overview of the problem of corruption in education and develops models of corrupt organizations in higher education, including the vertical structure, the horizontal structure, and the vertical hierarchy. Possible future structures of corrupt organizations are presented as forms evolving from the horizontal structures. (Contains 1 figure.)

Higher education in Russia is currently being reformed. A standardized computer-graded test and educational vouchers were introduced to make higher education more accessible, fund it more effectively, and reduce corruption in admissions to public colleges. The voucher project failed and the test faces furious opposition. This paper considers vouchers, standardized tests, educational loans, and privatization as related to educational corruption. Many criticize the test for increasing educational corruption, but it is needed to replace the outdated admissions policy based on entry examinations. This paper also considers the growing "de facto" privatization of the nation's higher education system as a fundamental process that should be legalized and formalized. It suggests that the higher education industry should be further restructured, and decentralized and privatized, and sees educational loans as a necessary part of the future system of educational funding.

Education in Central Eurasia has become one of the services most affected by corruption. Corruption in academia, including bribery, extortion, embezzlement, nepotism, fraud, cheating, and plagiarism, is reflected in the region's media and addressed in a few scholarly works. This article considers corruption in higher education as a product of interrelations between the government and academia. A substantial block of literature considers excessive corruption as an indicator of a weak state. In contrast to standard interpretations, this article argues that in non-democratic societies corruption is used on a systematic basis as a mechanism of direct and indirect administrative control over higher education institutions. Informal approval of corrupt activities in exchange for loyalty and compliance with the regime may be used in the countries of Central Eurasia for the purposes of political indoctrination. This paper presents the concept of corruption and coercion in the state-university relations in Central Eurasia and outlines the model which incorporates this concept and the "feed from the service" approach. It presents implications of this model for the state-university relations and the national educational systems in Central Eurasia in general and offers some suggestions on curbing corruption. (Contains 1 note, 2 tables, and 2 figures.)

A substantial body of literature considers excessive corruption an indicator of a weak state. However, in nondemocratic societies, corruption--whether informally approved, imposed, or regulated by public authorities--is often an indicator of a vertical power rather than an indicator of a weak state. This article explores the interrelations between the state and higher education institutions based on corruption as a mechanism of administrative control. It presents definitions of corruption, describes the concept of corruption and coercion as mechanisms of administrative control, offers a model, and develops model extension that accounts for peer pressure in academia. Higher education as an industry and universities as institutions or entities have certain features uncommon to other industries and institutions. Hence, theoretical frameworks should be adjusted to capture the specific features of higher education. University autonomy, financial independence, and accountability are used to investigate corrupt higher education institutions in nondemocratic regimes. In this article, the relations between the state and universities in nondemocratic regimes are analyzed using the case of higher education systems in the countries of the former Soviet Union, with a special focus on the Russian Federation and Ukraine, a region that has experienced dynamic change in both higher education systems and political structures during postsocialist transition. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)

Corruption in higher education is a newly emerging topic in the field of education research. Some aspects of corruption in education have been addressed in recent works by Eckstein, Hallak & Poisson, Heyneman, Noah & Eckstein, Segal, and Washburn. However, rigorous systematic research is lacking. This article considers corruption in higher education as reported in the media, following publications in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation. It addresses the differences in forms of corruption across the nations, identifying how exactly they differ and why. Major findings point to the following: some forms of corruption are region-specific while others are universal; types of corruption are connected to the characteristics of the national systems; the general trend in the media attention reflects growing concern about corruption in academia; in the United States more attention is now paid to fraud, plagiarism, and cheating, but in Russia to bribery in admissions. The findings help to determine which aspects of corruption in higher education should be given more consideration in future research and which might be prioritised, as well as how the national systems of higher education can be improved. (Contains 5 figures, 1 table, and 36 notes.)

Corruption is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Forms of corruption are multiple. Measuring corruption is necessary not only for getting ideas about the scale and scope of the problem, but for making simple comparisons between the countries and conducting comparative analysis of corruption. While the total impact of corruption is indeed difficult to measure and even more so internal changes in corruption, some aspects of corruption may be quantified and measured. This article presents major conceptual approaches to corruption and develops a technique for measuring the distribution of graft in a higher education industry by using some ideas about bribery and other forms of corruption among the faculty members in higher education institutions in transition and developing nations. In order to measure the level of corruption and its changes over time or changes due to government intervention and other anticorruption efforts, the author combines two indicators, namely the number of corrupt faculty members who take bribes in a given period of time and the value of the average bribe, calculated as weighted average. The author also introduces the Distribution index (DI), the weighted DI, and the share weighted DI in order to capture internal changes in the distribution of graft. The proposed methodology may be applied in measuring corruption in higher education across the nations and making comparisons. (Contains 2 notes and 4 figures.)

How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, by Anders Aslund. Washington, D.C.: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2009. Hardcover: ISBN 978-0-8813-2427-3, $26.95, 345 pages. If one were to ask [...]

Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of doctorates for sale in the Russian Federation. It focuses specifically on the practice of conferring fake or unearned doctoral degrees to elected politicians [...]

Abstract: In this article, the author considers corruption in higher education in Ukraine, including such aspects as corruption in admissions to higher education institutions, corruption in the academic process of [...]

Abstract: The 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine attracted the attention of the international community and became known as the Orange Revolution. The Orange Revolution symbolized the birth of civil society [...]

International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption, Volume Two, edited by Susan Rose-Ackerman and Tina Soreide. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2011. Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-84980-251-2, 148.50 [pounds sterling], 624 pages. Volume [...]

Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, and Social Science Approaches to Understanding Systemic Failure, by Stefan Hedlund. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Hardcover: ISBN 978-0-5217-6810-8, $95.00. 324 pages. Stefan Hedlund's book [...]