The rate of students who reported involvement in corruption from public and private universities.

On the given chart it is clearly seen that eight out of ten students involved in corruption are from the public universities, while only two students from private educational establishments stated that they have given bribes to teachers in order to get a higher grade. Consequently, it is shown that eight students from private universities are not involved in corruption, while only two students said about their non-participation in corruption from private universities.

Furthermore, along with their written answers for the given questions, some participants were asked to discuss their answers to the questionnaires in greater detail, and to reflect not only on their own experience, but on those of their friends as well. They were asked to reflect in greater detail on the different experiences which are connected with corrupt teachers, to explain reasons why they give bribes. In addition, some of participants who were involved in corruption gave information about the cost of the grades, told some cases from their lives and finally, they have given some possible solutions to the prevention of corruption. For example, a participant- Olzhas Nurmakhambetov, a 2^nd year student at the public Kazakh Technical University in Almaty, mentioned a lot of interesting facts of corruption at his university among teachers. He said that if you want to get the grade “A” you should give teachers 15 000 tenge. Moreover, sometimes teachers force students to pay them if they go to the office hours or ask for some additional material to learn. Even in some cases, teachers ask them to buy expensive perfumes or to repair their computers at home. A girl, Sholpan Kusshibekova, a 2^nd year student at the public Kazakh Women’s Pedagogical University described how teachers have become mercantile and everywhere in any case they search for material benefit and advantage for themselves. For example, last year when she was a freshman, their curator had collected 2000 tenge from the students having told them that this money was for university repairs. After some months later Sholpan realized that the university is on the state maintenance, consequently, the government should allocate money annually for the repair of the dormitory and auditoriums.

The other work in this chapter is related to the interviews which have been taken from the three absolutely different people of different ages and occupations. Additionally, the structure of interview each time was arranged by each of the interviewees, due to their position in the society, their occupation and some other factors like the lack of time. In other words, for the first two teachers from different universities and faculties the interview was semi-structured.

The first interviewee was Damilya Alimbayeva a 47 year old woman who works as a teacher of English language at the public Kazakh University of International Relations and World Languages. This interview occurred on March 9^th at that university, but unfortunately, she did not allow me to record her answers, although when she was called and asked to give some information about the rate of corruption in education sector, she agreed at once. During the interview she was very calm, confident, and pretty honest and looked directly into my eyes; her answers were very satisfactory. Alimbayeva has answered to all the asked questions and some extra questions. Concerning extra questions when asked whether she has ever taken bribes from the students, she replied “No, never ever.” She has been teaching in that university for twenty years and she has seen a lot of students and teachers. Damilya Alimbayeva is convinced that students are largely responsible for the existence of corruption, because, if nobody wants to pay for the fake knowledge, then nobody will wait for you to pay for the grades. Moreover, she has told about awful facts of some rich people’s children who are used to give bribes and even force some teachers to give high grades.

Along with the previous interview, the other interviewee is Kim (“Kim” is this person’s pseudonym), 54 years old (whose name is invented due to his wish). A professor of philosophy in the public Kazakh University of Technology,Kim stated that teachers are also guilty. The interview took place on March 1^st at his office in that university. The professor was very honest and tried to give full and adequate answers to all the given questions. Kim is very disappointed especially with young teachers, who are unqualified employees. Moreover, he said “I’m very interested in how36 year old professors have already done research for their doctoral dissertations.” He asserts that the most corrupt teachers are young and inexperienced teachers who do not care about the quality of education, who only follow money and who generate incorrect attitude of the students to the study. “Because of such teachers’ unprofessional and incompetent attitude to the teaching activity, we produce poorly-qualified alumni, who wander across the country in a search of work.” In addition, the interviewee showed his strong position in favor of the political structure of the Soviet Union times, when people did not even know what it was to buy grades and diplomas. Moreover, he said that even now, old teachers who have been teaching for more than twenty five years, they are very strict and have their own view of conscience and honor. As he underlined, today, people who are involved in corruption have very deformed concept about morals. Moreover, today’s students also are looking for the easiest ways to study. If they were honest with themselves and wanted to get a real education they would not accept giving bribes to teachers in order to get grades or buy diplomas. Then, he held up as an example the Japanese people and told about mentality of Japanese, about their conscientiousness and diligence. In conclusion, he said “The society degrades. We do not want to live; we want to exist silently and peacefully as an amoeba. People have lost an essence and the purpose of life. During the present time, all is measured by width of your pocket, instead of the “weight” of your brains! I understand why students buy diplomas, because there is an armchair is provided by his/her daddy”. At the end of the interview Kim gave me the solution to prevent corruption in Kazakhstan. He said that we do not take any cruel measures like death penalty for corrupt people, and the problem will exist until the government with the a help of the citizens not take some cruel measures.. “The state should maintain a single system in the fight against corruption. Unfortunately, for now, we do not have any stable system of it” asserted Kim.

The third and the most significant interview took place on March 14^th with a middle-aged man - Abylgazy Zholamanov. He works at the Department of Financial Police. The methods of the interview were not structured. Moreover, at first, Zholamanov’s behaviour embarrassed me, because I could not manage to ask a question, when he interrupted me and started to answer them himself and because of a lack of allocated time it was too hard to write down his words (he did not allow to record the interview). To be honest, he was prepared for the interview and gave only dry statistics and the facts. Besides, his very professional attitude to his work impressed me. And, in comparison to the previous two interviews, this interview was very objective in spite of its rote answers. According to Zholamanov, Kazakhstan takes 105^th place in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2010 which was surveyed by the Transparency International. “If we compare these results, of course there are obvious facts of the increase of Kazakhstani people’s Corruption Perception Index,” underlined Zholamanov. Additionally, the interviewee said that now the Department of Financial Police deals with this issue and has taken some measures to prevent corruption. One of them is creating a new site for students, which is called www.vzyatochnik.info. It works as the real "the black list" of the teachers taking bribes (read - demanding, asking). Here you can leave complaints about the teacher which has demanded from you a bribe, or has forced you it to give it, it is underlined on the main page of a site. Moreover, complaints are anonymous and the database of users under no circumstances will be given out to the third persons. When Zholamanov was asked about the possibility a student lying about the involvement in corruption of a certain teacher in order to take revenge, Abylgazy Zholamanov answered “Of course, we do not accept all of the complaints of students if we do not find out the credibility of this or that information. Because, any student can tell lies and slander the teacher because of a low grade. We have considered all these nuances…” (slyly smiling). Moreover, he said that corruption within education is not the only problem which they have been fighting against for many years. However, as Zholamanovasserted,the results of independent analysts’ research show that in Kazakhstan the volume of damage from corruption crimes in 2010 alone has reached 156 billion tenge. And it is a huge indicator, considering the economic situation and development of the country. The other important preventive measure is that, the propaganda action "Your “No Corruption!” is important” was started in Kazakhstan in April 2010. It was led by the agency of the republic of Kazakhstan on struggle against economic and corruption criminality (financial police) together with the political party "Nur Otan". This action was created in Kazakhstan for the purpose of involving to the process of fight against corruption the broad masses of a civil society and its institutes and formation of Kazakhstani people’s anticorruption outlook. In conclusion, Zholamanov said that it is not in his competence to give the confidential information of the state importance as it is not authorized by his rights.

In conclusion, it will not be superfluous to mark some cases and barriers in getting information and gathering people who would give me an interview. There were situations when people did not want to talk about corruption in that certain university. They tried to avoid such discussions and even told me that I have to ask permission from the President of the University (to write an official letter) and after that only I would be able to make a survey among students and take an interview from the Chairperson of the Student’s Organization which deals with such issues. It happened when I called to the administration of Kazakh Agricultural University, and a young man told me the words above. Then I asked him “What are you afraid of? I am not a police woman and I am not from Press”, but his answer was “I am not afraid. I just want to say that in OUR University there is NO corruption and please do not disturb us anymore. Everything is perfect”, and hung up the phone.

The other case happened when I was looking for a teacher from public Kazakh National Pedagogical University of name of Abay, who told journalists about the facts of corruption in that university in December 2010. I called to the personnel department of the given University and said that I was looking for Sagdat Adilbekov from the Faculty of Political Sciences. However, a woman said that this person does not work there anymore. Unfortunately, an important role belonged to this person in this part of my research project. He had reliable sources and knew enough about the machinations of his colleagues. Thus, if I had taken an interview from this person, I would have found out more interesting and useful information.

After that period of surveying and interviewing, there has appeared a “meal” on reflection about the answers of the participants and interviewees. The following chapter analyses the responses of the participants.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 718