Sentencing of Deputy Rector Marks Latest Corruption Crackdown in Russia

March 23, 2011, 3:30 pm

In the latest prosecution for bribe-taking by Russian university officials, a Moscow court has sentenced the deputy rector of the prestigious Russian State University of Management to seven years’ probation.

The court also imposed (linked pages are in Russian) a fine of one million rubles, or about $35,000, on the defendant, Alexander Asyutin. Prosecutors say he had solicited a bribe from a construction company repairing a roof on the campus.

Other recent cases involved university officials who extracted bribes from students for passing grades on entry exams, among other things. Among the dozen or so rectors, deputy rectors, and deans sentenced in the past six months are the deputy rector of Moscow State University of Culture and Arts, Vladimir Dolgopoly, who received four years, and the rector of Omsk State University, Nikolai Kazaching, who got three years and six months of probation for 13 instances of taking bribes from students.

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BaiGanyo

I’m sure some Americans will find a way to spin this into a human rights issue somehow.
22115691

I think you’re being hasty in characterizing this as a meaningless comparison. Credit card debt, and the difficulty of managing it, is something that a great many Americans can relate to and understand. Calling out the fact that student loan debt has now outpaced credit card debt puts the scale of the problem in perspective for the lay person. I would be very interested to hear you argue in favor of more credit card debt for greater numbers of Americans. The fact is that we save less than other countries, and this is an economic risk for us as a nation – as the recent recession illustrated quite dramatically. All debt contributes to this problem, even education debt at relatively lower interest rates.
mkant69

While people have an amazing fascination with milestones, this particular milestone is not meaningless. When student loan debt exceeded credit card debt for the first time in June 2010, it clearly demonstrated that student loan debt is a macroeconomic factor. It has a small, but growing impact on the economy. (Total annual student loan payments are now approximately 0.4% of GDP.)

This milestone, as well as the soon-to-be-exceeded $1 trillion milestone for total student loan debt outstanding, also serves to draw attention to the serious questions about the causes of student loan debt and the consequences of this debt. For example, news media coverage of credit cards still outnumbers coverage student loans by a factor of two to one, even though student loan and higher education issues have greater implications for the country. Google Trends shows that web searches concerning “credit cards” still outnumber searches concerning “student loans”, although the gap has narrowed considerably. (See http://trends.google.com/trends?q=credit+cards,+student+loans&sa=N) However, if one restricts the data to the United States, searches concerning “student loans” now exceed searches concerning “credit cards”. (See http://trends.google.com/trends?q=credit+cards%2C+student+loans&ctab=0&geo=us&date=all&sort=0)

The fascination with these milestones has also presented a great opportunity to educate students about financial literacy and smarter borrowing.