Children of Russian officials en masse attended prestigious universities out of competition

The DOXA student magazine, together with Vostochnye Stories, Novaya Gazeta and the Transparency International - Russia branch, published the results of a study on the admission of applicants to prestigious universities in the country for budget places.

According to the rules existing in Russia today, from 10 to 30 percent of state-funded places in Russian universities are allocated through a targeted recruitment scheme, and for some specialties applicants are admitted exclusively according to this scheme. As part of the targeted recruitment, a government agency in need of specialists can send any person to study, provide him with housing and an additional scholarship. And after graduation, the graduate is obliged to work for the department for three years.

After analyzing the data of 3,000 students, available in the public domain, the researchers came to interesting conclusions. From 2015 to 2019, in 15 domestic universities, journalists found 102 confirmed cases when children or relatives of civil servants entered school on a targeted basis from government agencies that these civil servants headed or with whom they closely interacted in the service. According to the authors of the investigation, the current situation may indicate an unresolved conflict of interest in a variety of domestic government agencies.

Among the civil servants whose children were admitted to budgetary places at Moscow State University, HSE, MGIMO, Moscow State Medical University named after Sechenov, MFTI (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology), RUDN, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow State Linguistic University, VGIK (the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography), MISIS (Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys), St. Petersburg State University, ITMO (St. Petersburg National Research University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics), SamNIU (Samara National Research University named after academician S.P. Korolyov), NNGU (N.I. Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University) and VGU (Voronezh State University), thus, the former Head of the organizational and mobilization department of the EMERCOM of Russia Andrei Tretyakov, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of Karachay-Cherkessia Jasharbek Uzdenov, former presidential adviser Sergei Dubik, head of the Union of Investigators Alexander Mokritsky, former governor of Mordovia, and now - the special representative of the president Nikolai Merkushkin, deputy chairman of the government of the Tver region Artem Azhgirevich, head of the financial and economic department of the department of logistic and financial support of the Federal Drug Control Service Vitaly Maslov and many others.

Without targeted recruitment, the children of some officials would not have been able to enter prestigious universities, since their grades were up to 50 points below the minimum passing score. Some applicants, on whose training the state spent a lot of money on the target recruitment, could not complete the course of study, and some, after completing their studies, did not fulfill the agreements and refused to work in the civil service for the obligatory three years.

When the authors of the investigation turned to universities for a comment, they received an answer that they allegedly did not have information about the high-ranking relatives of the target people who came to them.