Registan.net

This was up last week at Ferghana.ru, who grabbed it off Newsuz.com.

Most of the universities of Uzbekistan are just now ending their winter sessions, and at a time that was already stressful enough for students, a new piece of unexpected news has been piled on: the universities across the country have been ordered by the Ministry of Education to purposely lower the quantity of students receiving A’s. [отличников].

Currently there are over 60 institutions of higher education functioning in Uzbekistan. According to information from the website Newsuz.com, the large quantity of students receiving ‘A’ averages has caused the Ministry of Higher and Specialized Education (MVSO) in Uzbekistan to increase its spending to cover higher stipends [given as an incentive for better grades]. The new head of the MVSO, Azimjon Parpiev, issued the order to save money on stipends by decreasing the number of students who receive ‘high honors.’

Presently students who receive high honors receive a monthly stipend of 60,000 so’m (about $45), “honors” students get 50,000 so’m ($41), and the regular stipends for students awarded scholarships are 40,000 so’m, or $30 per month. If the institutions manage to cut back on the quantity of “high honors” students across the entire country, the government could [theoretically] save a great deal of money.

The website Newsuz.com says that in an academic department at one of the Tashkent universities, professors were ordered by the MVSO to cut back the number of A’s in each course by five or six students. Otherwise, they threatened, both the teacher who gave the ‘A’ and the student him/herself would be required to report to the minister’s own office to ‘pass an exam’.

It cannot be overlooked that a great number of the “high honors” students don’t exactly earn their grades–among them there are certainly those whose “honors” are a reward only for slipping the teacher money under the table.

Today, the system of higher education in Uzbekistan is considered one of the most compromised spheres of both government and society. The process of bribery begins already during the application process for universities, and continues during both regular sessions and exams. In many of the country’s universities, bribery and extortion have become regular features of the system, and moreover a large portion of the students don’t so much study a subject, but rather prefer to purchase it. Only in universities and institutions founded by foreign countries is corruption considered a rarity [Well… hmmm. People in Tashkent like to claim that they can buy anything, so it’s hard to know what to think of rumors about bribes at Westminster and the new MGU satellite].

The MVSO’s own website features a survey according to which, when students were asked “How do you pass your exams?” 74% of them answered “with thorough knowledge and good study habits,” 16% said “with the help of material means” [a tidy Russian euphemism for bribery] , 5% said “with help from acquaintances” [ditto: cheating], and 3% said “I don’t take exams at all.” Taking into account the fact that information published by the ministry is tightly controlled, it’s safe to assume that the actual number of students paying for their grades is significantly higher.

Observers [wow that’s vague!] report that in some universities before exams in certain subjects the students chip in together on a fixed sum of money that was negotiated ahead of time by the teacher/examiner and representatives from the class. Interviews with students themselves have shown that even those students who don’t have any doubts about their abilities to pass the tests prefer not to stand out among their peers and throw their own contribution into the pot as well.

This philosophy of education cannot fail to have consequences. There are already no small number of employees—hired on the basis of qualifications it turns out that they bought—that managers of organizations and businesses across the country are trying to get rid off at the first possible opportunity.

“Students like this are worth nothing as specialists,” contributes the director of a college in the Ferghana Valley, complaining about the quality of teachers who have recently received their degrees. “It used to be that young specialists had self-discipline, tried to firm-up the knowledge they had gained through practice on the job. These days the new graduates stand out by their absolute indifference to everything. And this is how we’ll build the “great future of our country?” [The “official” slogan of Uzbekistan in the 1990s was, “Uzbekistan—Great State of the Future”/O’zbekiston—kelajagi buyuk davlat).

[The article goes on to say that students who were able to study abroad before the “Umid” program was cancelled a few years ago have often chose to leave the country for good, in part because of the frustrating corruption in the educational system. It also, of course, offers the caveat that there are indeed many good students and teachers in the country who don’t participate in the “system.”].

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The obvious question that the article doesn’t address, though, is what are you supposed to do with $41 a month anyway? Interestingly, it also doesn’t address whether or not this stipend amount actually covers the amount of the bribes. When I interviewed students on the subject last summer, I was told (on good authority) that it cost between $4,000 and $7,000 to ‘get into’ the ‘good’ universities in Tashkent.

It would seem, using, um, logic, that a far better way to save money on the stipends would be to give them to students who actually need them, rather than simply giving a refund to students who were already paying for their grades in the first place. Making the stipends need-based, though, would bring up the больной вопрос that they are far below a basic standard of living. So yeah, just give fewer A’s—and besides, creating a market shortage will drive up prices, so no doubt some teachers won’t be complaining too loudly.

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