| Chapter 1: | Introduction: The Importance of External Examinations in Education |
|
|
When Bulgarian students were asked about corruption, 21% said they had ‘never heard’ of any way to gaining admission illegally and hence 79% had heard of such ways. In Croatia, the figure for never having heard about corruption was 40%; in Moldova, it was 21%; and in Serbia, 16%. At the same time, 33% of the Serbian students thought that faculty would change an admissions score if bribed. Forty percent of the students in Moldova would use an illegal method of gaining admission if one were available. In the Kyrgyz Republic, 68% of the students at the Kyrgyz Technical University described their university as ‘bribable’. High bribery scores were recorded for every government university in the country. The exception was the American University of Central Asia, a small, independent liberal arts college in Bishkek accredited in the United States with a strong sanctionary infrastructure to counteract the possibility of corruption. There, only 5% of the students thought the college was ‘bribable’.
Which fields are more likely to be open to bribes, and is the propensity to accept bribes constant over time? The rector of the Kazakh Turkish University (accredited in Turkey) wanted to evaluate the quality of his institution and commissioned student surveys in 2001 and 2005. On the question about whether faculty would accept bribes, the differences in response from one department to another were pronounced. Faculty were more likely to accept a bribe in those departments which were in higher demand—Economics, Business and Law. Once the first survey was published, faculty expected the next survey to contain a question on corruption. The anticipation of this new accountability measure precipitated a decline in corruption. The exceptions were in Law and in Economics where the level of perceived bribery increased rather than decreased.
Is educational corruption limited to developing countries? Evidently not. Evidence from the United States would suggest that the propensity to cheat on tests is pervasive and growing. On most university campuses, 75% of the students admit to some form of cheating.