Learning to pay

Romanians believe corruption is everywhere: from customs officers, policemen and judges up to high-ranking state officials, university professors and medical doctors. Bribery has become the principal way of solving problems. The authorities have placed personal interest above legality. The money seems to have triumphed over interpersonal relations. As a rule, corruption is linked to those in power. Government officials, the police, customs officers, health care workers, the judicature, representatives of university administrations and teachers are, as most, susceptive to bribery. Ordinary citizens have to deal with corruption in order to get quality services. In relation to education, corruption is demanded and given during the registration of children in schools; to pass examinations; to help students to obtain placement in secondary schools and colleges, transfers and opportunities to repeat or choose a class. Moreover, teachers give bribes in order to be promoted, to be transferred and to be given placements. These are just some common practices of bribery in the Education System in Romania.

Talia Delgado
Romania - 05/01/2005
  Daily Romanians are assisting to corruption chapters within schools and universities.

P.F is just 18 years old and he already knows a lot about corruption in his high school, located in a 150.000 inhabitants town in the North of the country. He has been using bribery to pass exams since he entered high school; now again in his last year before University, the pressure and competition for getting good marks, that will allow him to get into a good university without a preliminary exam and smaller fees is pushing him to increment the payment for marks and exams to his teachers.

“I need an average 9 or 10. I have some difficulty in science, but I do not want to waste my time studying. Most of what I have to learn is useless anyway. I am going crazy trying to find all the money that I need to pay for my grades. With some teachers it is easier, it is enough to give them some gifts, like wine, whisky or gin, but with others it is more complicated, because I need to pay them around 50 euros to assure a ten in my final exam”.

“It is also about the final exam, the big one that gives you the final grade to enter University. All my colleagues are worried about it, mainly because we have not attended all the classes we were supposed to, and also because we do not have too much time to study.

Some of my colleagues have made an agreement with some teachers for private lessons at a good price, to complete what is done in school or to help them with the harder subjects; this is incredible, that we have to pay for classes that should be taught according to the national curriculum.”

“I have been talking to my classmates, we have agreed to chip in about 200.000 lei each (about 6 euros), to pay a teacher to let us cheat on a test for one of the subjects we have to study for the final exam. We are forty in my class so imagine how much money they are making. She just told us to be careful and discrete while cheating, because there will be other teachers from other schools watching and, in fact it is illegal to do it, but if we are careful nobody will notice it”.

Types of corruption

Some of the more frequent corrupt practices in education are similar to problems of corruption in other public sectors, but there are some that are very specific to the education system. The most common practices detected in Romanian education are:
• “Buying” good grades, or higher grades in case the pupil needs a better grade than the one he or she obtains in the exam;
• “Buying” entrance examinations to secondary schools and universities.
• It is also frequent to “sell” tests, final examination forms, buying the right to cheat/copy in exams, buying information about previous performances in an exam, favoritism and nepotism.

Students mainly do all this, but teachers also impose some of these practices as a normal way of living. Teachers have some specific ways to suggest that, with a short amount of money things can be easier for students. Among this kind of practices of teachers we could list: offering to give additional private lessons, creating a system of incentives for selecting specific text books, very often authored by the teacher, forcing in this way the students to buy their own books, thus taking an indirect benefit or including these books as part of the courses. It is also common to not teach all the curriculum, under pretext that a course book from another town needs to be procured, which they offer to bring at a moderate prize. In some extreme cases teachers ask to be pay with favors, sometimes of a sexual nature, and other times using students for personal business or interests.

“I have paid to pass exams that were too hard or complicated to study for, because we do not have all the course books, or just because I had failed them too many times. I have paid 100 euros each time. It is very easy to arrange it. First you just go to the teacher to have a private interview in which you will expose your case and needs and after this they will decide how much you have to pay to solve your problem. They have fixed prices for services. You pay and you assure at list the minimum grade for yourself; later, if you want to make it higher, you have to give them a bonus and you can choose what mark you want to appear in your bulletin of qualifications. Each grade has a different price.” C.P is third year student in the faculty of Engineering and Electronics in the North of the Country.

R.P is a terminal year student in one of the Faculties of Public Administration in the country, and she explained that “in my university there is a very famous teacher. She is the chief of department and she makes a lot of money from the students. They pay for their grades. She accepts all the money and she uses it to pay for a treatment against cancer in Italy. If you need to pay something you should go to her husband’s office. He works in constructions, and he manages all the payments, so as to keep suspicions away from his wife”.

“This is high level corruption. If they find out, she will be expulsed, but nobody will have to know except the people involved, of course. I am glad that I am about to graduate - no more payments! I have the sensation that I have not learned anything these past four years, I am a bit worried for my future, and I almost do not know anything in my field of activity. I am really ashamed of how things work in my University, in all universities.”

There is no difference between private or public universities or high schools. It is even worse in private education, because they have their own funds and sponsors so they do not have any governmental control – it’s all conveniently covered up. All these practices are common in private universities.

Some students in the last year of University have refused to give here their true names, for security reasons. They are scared of possible reprisals or to not obtain their degree after talking about the situation in their University. It is a private University of Educational Sciences, in which things get really complicated for final year students.

“The Director summoned a meeting with all the students in their final year, to explain them what the requirements are for obtaining one’s degree. He explained to us that after the final exams we also have to present our final project, a study of a concrete case. This final paper has to be presented in front of the Examination Commission in another town, with teachers that do not have any relation with the University in which we are studding. He told us that it is a very difficult year, which we will not have enough time to do both things and he informed us about the possible solutions. The first one was to buy the right to cheat on the exam: the invigilator will have a share of the money that you pay so he will not care about anything. He advised us to make sure we knew how to cheat: “I do not want later complaints about failed exams. It is not my fault if you do not know how to cheat.”

Secondly he told us that the materials needed to prepare for the final exam had to be brought from another town. So he offered to do it himself if people agreed to pay for his trip. He also made recommendations on choosing the tutor or teacher supervising our thesis paper. He told us: “you have the possibility to take the easiest teacher, you pay him and he will pass and agree with your final paper; or you can choose a difficult one, one that is not paid and will make you study and modify your paper”. He offered to negotiate with the teachers and advised us to not try to negotiate personally with any of the teachers (it was obvious that, since some of them did not take bribes from students, he was in danger of being discovered).

Finally talking about one of the most important subjects, the final project, we asked him if we could do it ourselves and study. He denied categorically: “Forget about it you will not have time,” he said. “You have to buy one already done, for other students or for the teachers it is not important whether it was already used before, they will not remember. So I will put you in contact with the teachers that will act as tutors for papers that you will buy at the price of 300 euros.” (the minimum salary in Romania is from 80 to 150 euros).

He also told us that we should pay our last year’s taxes. When some of the students told him that they did not have the money to do it, he immediately thought about something. In a private meeting with some students he proposed the following:

“I am part of a new political party that has many chances to win the local elections, it can do many good things for the local community, but we need new members. I was thinking that maybe you can talk with some friends of yours to become members of my party. This is how we could help each other”.

“The worst part of all this is that we were forced to do it, we did not have any chance not to. We finally bought the final papers, and they were bullshit, obsolete, not well-documented and on top of everything you had to learn it and present something you had not done and you did not really care for. Also, we had to pay another tax, to enter the final examination. This meant that you could not appear in front of the Commission if you did not have the money to pay.”

The impact of corruption on education

All these testimonies are clear examples of bribery in the education sector. Most of the times it is a vicious circle in which students and teachers are trapped. The main reason for this behavior can be the low salaries that teachers generally have in Romania. A high school teacher will be paid around 3.000.000 lei (80 Euros) if s/he is new and 7.000.000 million lei is/he is an experienced one.

In University things are not well at all for teachers, the minimum that a teacher will be paid is 3.000.000 lei and the maximum they can obtain is 21.000.000 (approx. 400 Euros). The low salaries make teachers lack motivation, thus they do not put a lot of effort into teaching. This is why many of them are forced in a way to turn to bribes, as a complement to their salaries. There is also not many ways to make it easier study for students. There are not many scholarships, course materials have to be bought privately all the time due to the lack of funding for universities or high schools for basic things such as books, study rooms, course books.

There is an increased number of dropouts. Many families cannot afford to pay bribes or taxes to keep their kids in school. Students are also unmotivated, because they do not learn enough. Most students finishing University are not optimistic about their future. In their jobs, they are required to master knowledge that they never get during their studies. Young people perceive that there is a big discrepancy between the job market and what education is offering them.

The job market requires procedural knowledge (to know how, when, why and where to take the information). The job market is also asking for superior capacities such as social insertion, communication skills, teamwork, problem-solving skills, creative thinking, originality, initiative, courage and self-confidence. On the other hand, what education is offering them is obsolete knowledge and obedience. A well prepared and informed youth prefers to go abroad to look for a better chance of personal development.

Since 1989 the educational system has gone through many attempts of reform, trying to create a solid material basis of the educational system, to build a general education policy, as well as an open disposition to learn from the educational models of other European countries. Beginning with 2000, the education sector has been groping for a stable long-term strategy in high schools and universities.

In the meantime, teachers organize demonstrations each year asking for better salaries; students also complain about the poor conditions in dormitories, about the absence of scholarships or any kind of help from the state to cover their costs or to control corruption. At the same time students are demanding an open system, adapted to real life, open access to more information, improved relationships between teachers and students. They do not want to be just passive beneficiaries but also participants. They are demanding to be taken into consideration when the reform in education is discussed. But the situation is not changing.

“There is no chance, corruption is everywhere. If the persons that have to solve it are the first involved in corruption cases, how is it going to be solved?!” asks a student looking for his first job after graduating from law school. It the same question that every Romanian is pondering on their way to work.

Note: All interviewees’ names have been changed for security reasons. Fear is stronger than the truth. This report contains the necessary data to understand and portray the current situation.

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