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The rector of the Moscow State University of Culture and the Arts is alleged to have handed out 130 "false" law degrees between 2001 and 2004 in exchange for bribes worth RUR300,000. Estimates of how much students pay teachers and academics in bribes every year range from RUR250m to RUR300m.

According to a study published in the February issue of the Comparative Education Review, educational corruption in the former USSR and other former communist regimes has increased since the end of the Cold War. Among the immediate problems for students is that a devalued degree adversely affects their earning power. Devaluation of degrees has serious international policy implications, degrades the entire social system of those countries and decreases the likelihood that those graduates will be able to improve their economic standing.

A good grade on the new SAT-style exams in Russia costs about 40,000 rubles. Could reform and crackdowns on corruption bring education back from the brink?

An exposé in the Russian edition of Esquire has roiled education and health officials here by detailing the corruption at six medical schools. The magazine in April published nine short articles by medical students describing the various ways they can pay professors in exchange for passing tests.

One in seven Russian students readily admits to cheating in university exams and one in 25 students also reports having paid for someone else to write at least one mid-term or final-year paper, according to the annual Monitoring of Education Markets and Organizations Project (Memo), which received responses from almost 3,000 Russian undergraduates in 2013.