Corruption in Russia's Doctoral Education

Abstract

Doctorates have long attracted attention of those aspiring to scholarship and research, but also those seeking verbal distinctions and a documented knowledge. Doctoral degrees are considered as signs of a high level expertise and authority in a given filed. The growing number of dissertation defenses does not necessarily translate into a higher quality of dissertations or qualifications of newly produced doctorates. Such a trend may in part be a result of the growing corruption in higher education, including doctoral education. This paper addresses the issue of "dissertations for sale" in the Russian Federation. It describes corruption in conferring doctoral degrees in its most explicit forms and focuses on possible solutions for this problem. It searches to answer the questions: Why people buy doctorates? Whether this practice is harmful? Is corruption in doctoral education really a bad thing? Is it possible to stop such a practice and how? Answering these questions helps develop a conceptual approach to the problem of doctorates for sale, on the basis of which it will be possible to build future theoretical and empirical work.

Keywords: corruption, dissertation, doctoral degrees, higher education, Russia

JEL Classification: I23, I28, P36, P37