The introduction of the Unified State Exam (USE) and the history of its application in Russia are typical of attempts to introduce any institution that establishes equal rules of the game in a particular area. The USE was conceived as a universal tool for assessing the knowledge of schoolchildren, sharply reducing the role of personal discretion of teachers and university admissions committees. Of course, the USE has encountered united resistance from the corruption lobby. This resistance is growing.

A series of recent scandals related to the publication of test versions on the Internet and early completion of state exams by children of officials has once again forced people to think about modernizing the Unified State Exam itself. Yesterday, the Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov announced that the current procedure for admission to universities will change in the near future. According to Livanov, the average grade of the school certificate, as well as the graduate's portfolio - his extracurricular, creative and sports achievements - will be added to the Unified State Exam results.

Livanov's initiative, if we treat it purely formally, is a further convergence of the conditions for admission to domestic and foreign universities. According to the scientific director of the HSE Institute of Education, Isak Froumin, students' extracurricular achievements - victories in subject Olympiads and creative successes - are taken into account when entering specialized faculties and specialized universities. The problem is in implementing the minister's innovations in Russian conditions.

There are already many questions about the procedure for holding many university Olympiads: they have correspondence selection rounds, the honesty of which is problematic to verify. The criteria for assessing assignments in the face-to-face rounds of a number of Olympiads are vague and often leave a wide field for subjectivity of the examiners and, consequently, corruption. Meanwhile, their winners and some prize-winners still have the right to non-competitive admission.

One can only imagine how the supply of subject Olympiads will increase and how the price of winning will rise, literally and figuratively. Without an independent audit of the Olympiad procedures and their results, they will lead to "cross-pollination", when parents will have to pay tutors from among university teachers who compose assignments for individual subjects.

Taking into account school certificates is a separate conversation. If in a number of regions large-scale falsifications of seemingly objective tests were uncovered, then one can imagine how academic performance in some schools will increase. It seems to us that sports achievements (or the results of passing the GTO) should be taken into account only when entering specialized universities or corresponding faculties. Otherwise, many universities in the country risk exchanging "glasses wearers" and "nerds" for swimmers, weightlifters and winners of Olympics of dubious integrity.

Such initiatives are the result of an ongoing debate about how to improve institutions and eliminate their shortcomings. Some insist on a detailed improvement of procedures, in particular the abolition of the state exam result as a key criterion for assessing the work of governors and schools. Others are trying, without setting up one tool, to add new ones that will allow using institutions and rules manually. Simply put, they are not trying to eliminate loopholes in the Unified State Exam, but to create new opportunities for selfish tricks, a kind of competition of corruption in the field of education.

From the editor: Livanov passed the Unified State Exam