The department found violations in the work of Rosobrazovanie

At the end of last week, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) issued an order to the Federal Agency for Education (Rosobrazovanie), indicating a violation of the rules for confirming foreign diplomas. According to the FAS, the Federal State Institution "Interobrazovanie", subordinate to the agency, received the functions of examination and certification of diplomas illegally. In addition, his financial activities were considered opaque: money for performing public services, according to the FAS, ends up in private accounts, bypassing the budget. The materials of the FAS inspections have already been sent to the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs "for taking appropriate measures."

According to the FAS, Rosobrazovanie violated Part 3 of Art. 15 of the Law “On Protection of Competition”, illegally endowing the institution “Interobrazovanie” with state functions of confirming and recognizing diplomas.

As ex-head of Rosobrnadzor Viktor Bolotov explained to Kommersant, educational documents “from school to PhD (equivalent to a candidate’s scientific degree - Kommersant ) received in foreign educational institutions are confirmed annually by several tens of thousands of people.” Among the consumers of this service, according to Mr. Bolotov, are children of Russians who graduated from Western colleges and decided to continue their studies in Russia, foreign employees of financial companies who need a Russian equivalent of a diploma to find employment, as well as doctors (mostly of Chinese origin) working in Russia. The procedure for recognizing a foreign diploma involves several stages: checking the existence of the educational institution that issued the diploma and its authenticity, comparing the curricula of Western and Russian educational institutions and determining what level of education in Russia the knowledge acquired by a foreign graduate corresponds to. Based on the results of the examination, the service consumer receives a Russian document with a special stamp certifying its authenticity.

A review of this procedure by the FAS came to the following conclusions. State services in the field of recognition of diplomas should be provided by Rosobrnadzor, but these powers ended up with Interobrazovanie, established as part of the Rosobrazovanie agency. The FAS issued an order to Rosobrazovanie to stop violating antimonopoly legislation, noting that the Ministry of Education and Science “did not exercise proper control over the activities of Rosobrazovanie.”

Rosoobrazovanie believes that the FAS data is not entirely accurate. “Interobrazovanie only deals with accepting documents and conducting examinations, and the endorsement of the authenticity of documents is the prerogative of Rosobrnadzor,” Nikolai Dmitriev, head of the international cooperation department of Rosobrnadzor, told Kommersant.

A source in the Ministry of Education and Science, familiar with the situation, believes that this is a technical misunderstanding. Thus, Interobrazovanie was established within the Ministry of Education under the head of the department, Vladimir Filippov, who left his post five years ago. During the administrative reform, Interobrazovanie came under the control of the agency, although its scope of activity rather relates to the tasks of the supervisory service. “There is no crime here, there is regulatory uncertainty,” says Kommersant’s interlocutor.

Meanwhile, the FAS has more serious charges. Thus, according to the department, Interobrazovanie entered into a partnership agreement with the non-profit partnership Magister. Moreover, in such a way that the fee from clients who want to confirm their foreign diploma (fee from 300 to 500 rubles), according to the FAS, ends up in the accounts of this company, bypassing the state treasury. FAS announced the transfer of materials from inspections of Interobrazovanie and Magistr to the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia "for taking appropriate measures."

It was not possible to contact representatives of Intereducation and Master. However, the agreement between these organizations dated 2007 was published on the websites of these organizations. According to information received by Kommersant from a source in the Ministry of Education and Science, it may be that Interobrazovania transferred the authority to examine diplomas to the Master without first holding a competition. The Federal Agency for Education assured Kommersant that “they will look into this issue.”

Tatyana Kommersant-Sukonnaya

FAS defended its diploma