This book offers a long overdue account of the wide range of corruption and cheating practices in Russian higher education, including bribery, financial fraud, clientelism, plagiarism, exam cheating, and much more. Serghei Golunov ruthlessly uncovers the recent social trends that have created a favourable ground for such malpractices and evaluates the efficiency of measures taken against corruption and fraud by various actors. Although corruption and cheating are so wide-spread in most Russian universities that the real value of their diplomas is very questionable, these problems are prioritized neither by higher education managers nor by foreign actors such as partner universities, participants of the Bologna process, or the authors of global university rankings.

Serghei Golunov is the author of two previous monographs (including "EU-Russian Border Security, Challenges, (Mis)Perceptions, and Responses," London: Routledge, 2012) and about 150 articles and policy papers. His research interests include Corruption in Higher Education, Post-Soviet Border Security Issues, and Conspiracy Theorizing in Russia.