Who is Guilty and What to Do? Popular Opinion and Public Discourse of Corruption in Russian Higher Education

Corruption in higher education in Russia is a growing problem. This paper considers scholarly and popular discourse in Russia around this corruption and the discussion examines its context within the overall corruptness of the society and reflects on measures of comprehensive educational reform. Drawing upon a theoretical framework linking popular opinion and public discourse, discussion in the scholarly and popular press between 1998 and 2011 is analyzed, and the themes of the discourse are traced. Results focus on the reasons for corruption in the higher education sector, as well as on current and potential ways to tackle corruption, including the newly introduced standardized testing. Even though the national test will not solve the problem of corruption in education, its full scale, country-wide implementation at this point appears to be inevitable