Staunton, January 16 – Massive
corruption in the schools and universities of Daghestan involving purchasing of
grades and diplomas has “devalued education,” contributes to the alienation of
young people whose paper credentials exceed their actual knowledge and skills
and further isolate them and their north Caucasus homeland from the rest of
Russia.
Bribery in schools and universities
is widespread throughout the post-Soviet world, but Musa Musayev, a journalist
for “Kavkazskaya politika,” argues in an article published today that the
situation is especially serious in Daghestan where its undermining of education
has “created a mass of problems” (kavpolit.com/s-dagestanskimi-diplomami-ne-podxodit/).
Daghestani
parents want their children to be educated at prestige schools and in prestige
subjects, Musayev says, but then they spend “millions” to bribe teachers and
administrators thus guaranteeing that their children will get diplomas without
having acquired real knowledge or without ensuring a good fit between their
degrees and the job market.
That
process, he continues, has led to “the growth in the number of pseudo-educated
people,” and their presence in the community has “created a mass of problems,” including
but not limited to a growth in “religious and national intolerance” and a
decline in the willingness of the young to accept “an all-Russian identity.”
Some
of them, the journalist says, become criminals, others join the militants in
the mountains, and the members of a third group “not
infrequently move beyond the borders of Daghestan where because of their
unworthy conduct they create inter-ethnic conflicts” and undermine the
reputation of their home republic.
But perhaps the largest group consists
of those who remain unemployed or are forced to take jobs below the income and
status level they expected their schooling to entitle them. These people are
furious about what has happened to them, and they form the basis for a social
explosion or even revolution.
According to Musayev, another
serious problem in education there is the shortage of places in the school
system in Daghestan, a republic whose rapidly growing population presents very
different challenges than those in other Russian regions. In Daghestan now,
“the pyramid of Soviet education has been turned on its head,” with “the number
of higher schools greater than the number of technical schools.”
The
condition of the educational system’s facilities in Daghestan is appalling,
with many schools in substandard buildings that date back to the period before
World War II. Makahchkala is building new schools rapidly, at a rate of 15 per
year, but that has not kept up with the demand given the high birth rate.
Many
schools have three shifts and the situation with regard to pre-school education
is even worse: only 25 percent of those children who want to attend are able
to, there is a waiting list of some 60,000 children, and there are not enough
teachers given their low pay and low status in the community.
”The
authority of teachers has declined because of the low quality of preparation of
pedagogical cadres,” Musayev says. And the best graduates choose to go
elsewhere to teach rather than to remain in their own republic. Wealthy parents
could correct the situation, but they choose not to, even though they often
contribute mightily to the construction of mosques.
“In
Daghestan, there are now more mosques than schools,” the “Kavkazskaya politika”
writer says. And many of them attract
few attendees or have imams who urge support for the public school system. As a result, children “who do not study or
study poorly in the schools then go into ‘the forest’ and extract tribute” from
those who should have been building schools.
Everything in this area is inter-connected,
Musayev says, especially in a republic where the average age is 26 to 27 and
where “more than half of the population” is of an age to be in the educational
system. Tragically, most schools in
Daghestan are producing either people whose skills are not needed or people who
because of bribes have no skills at all.
And they cannot escape this
situation even if they leave the republic, he writes. In many Russian cities, employers are putting
out signs that declare “’We do not hire specialists with Daghestani diplomas.’”
That only further alienates the population of that North Caucasus republic and
makes solving its many other problems even more difficult.
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