KYRGYZSTAN TODAY Policy briefs on - Department of Geography

provide a student with all the necessary skills to meet the labour market’s requirements.
Many graduates with diplomas are ill-prepared to look for a job in the labor market,
since their educational background does not have any practical application and does
not meet market demand.
Students first face the system of corruption during their entrance examinations. Due
to a lack of up-to-date methods and technologies for selecting enrollees, bribes become
the major form of corruption. Bribes may be so high that not even mid-level income
families can afford them. In this situation, there is no difference between contract and
budget-based applicants.
While instructors receive money while preparing students, the university
management takes bribes from enrollees through intermediaries. In reality, this is a
well-organized criminal activity at the university level, in which corruption is a tool for
gaining money.
One anticorruption measure introduced during entrance exams was all-national
testing. However, this move gave rise to another type of corruption: giving bribes for
receiving high scores. One more kind of corruption during enrollment– particularly
for contract-based applicants– is selling entrance exams, although university managers
try to convince the public that corruption is not possible when using computer-based
testing to assessing the level of knowledge among applicants. Certainly, we should
also consider cases in which highly- proficient applicants pass their exams successfully
without any connections or bribes.
Students have a favourable attitude toward the corrupt system, since all that many
are concerned about is obtaining a diploma to enable them to get a prestigious position.
This may be viewed as another source that forcies corruption to grow. Everyone benefits
from the current status of corruption, including instructors and university management,
which receives benefits from a system eroded by corruption. It is also convenient for
students, who can obtain a diploma without studying hard.
For the purpose of this article, the author interviewed people from the higher
education system, including professors and instructors from a number of universities,
employees of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic, and students
and civil society activists. According to the results, the highest rate of corrupt practices
is observed during the exam period. Absolutely wrong values are prioritized, with low
significance attached to receiving an education, and high importance attached to obtaining
a diploma. As estimated by experts, only 5 to 10 percent of graduates can be regarded as
qualified specialists. The existing corruption system does not help students improve their
knowledge, which increases the number of non-qualified or low-skilled specialists. The
latter causes other, even more serious, problems for society and the state.
The most important factor in providing high-quality education is sufficient
textbooks and study materials, as well as stimulating and financing the faculty in
writing and preparing such materials. Since the Ministry of Education and university
management pay little, if any, attention to solving these problems, another type of
corruption has emerged, related to publication and further distribution of textbooks
and scholarly materials.
Given the fact that libraries are poorly equipped and experience a shortage of
textbooks, the existing practice of selling books may also be viewed as corrupt. In Soviet
times, funds were allocated for publishing textbooks, methodology guidelines, and
scholarly works, along with the centralized system of distributing new publications
among all libraries in the country. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this system
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