MOSCOW, August 10 (Itar-Tass) — Minister of Public Health and Social Development Tatyana Golikova signed a decree relieving rector of the Pirogov Russian State Medical University Nikolai Volodin of his duties, the ministry’s press service told Itar-Tass.
Earlier, a check found mass violations in enrolling new students. The Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) sent information to Golikova to consider firing the rector of the medical university, also known as “second medical,” and disciplining other guilty officials.
Prosecutors sent the materials of the check to the Investigative Committee for deciding on criminal persecution of university administration officials under Criminal Code Article 285, Part 1 (“abuse of office”), and Article 292, Part 2 (“forgery in office”), PGO spokeswoman Marina Gridneva told Tass.
The check was launched after students’ complaints about corruption and fraud with lists of entrants.
“In connection with the statement by the Russian Students Union and numerous publications in the mass media, the PGO, together with the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science (Rosobrnadzor) began a check into the fact of falsification of the lists of entrants, recommended for admission to the Russian State Medical University named after N.Pirogov,” Gridneva said.
The PGO summoned rector Nikolai Volodin for questioning.
According to the Russian Students’ Union, the university administration attempted a fraud during the enrolment campaign.
“It has been ascertained that on July 27, the university’s enrolment board approved a list of entrants recommended for admission, by the results of their documents. The list had 626 surnames of non-existent entrants with overstated Single State Examination (EGE) grades. On the same day, the list was placed on the university’s website, and the enrolment board’s info stand. This became possible due to the illegal actions by certain members of the enrollment board and the technical secretary’s office. They created “phantom entrants” by altering personal data from the documents of perspective students in 2010,” the PGO spokeswoman said.
The fact that the dummy students had no personal files and were not found in the federal database on the schoolchildren taking EGE did not deter the above university officials from entering them on the list of “dead souls.”
These illegal actions created the situation where a considerable number of authentic entrants were denied the opportunity to get enrolled for state-funded tuition. The scheme provided for admitting to the university a number of persons with poor EGE results, which the board members might have done for mercenary interest, Gridneva said.
On top of that, the University has admitted citizens for training for non-accredited programs of higher professional education. “Despite name change, the University has not produced the documents to licensing body for re-drawing its license in education, she added.
Volodin earlier stated that a number of personnel on the enrolment board had already been punished, after a Rosobrnadzor check found them guilty of messing with the lists of entrants.
“The secretary of the enrolment board has been reprimanded,” Volodin said, and several commission members no longer work for it.
The fake enrolment lists were invalidated, Rosobrnadzor chief Lyubov Glebova announced.
Director of the Department of Education and Human Resources under the Ministry of Public Health and Social Development Vadim Yegorov earlier predicted to reporters that the University reactor might be disciplined or even sacked.