Higher Education and Corruption: Macedonian Alumni Experiences

Corruption (lat. corruptio, corrumpere, pervert) means dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery. The most general meaning of corruption, as systematic phenomena (Dinkovski, 20012: 12), is impurity, infection, or decay. It is abuse of public power for personal interests that distort the social institutions. This destructive phenomenon is very present in the Balkan countries. Some 50 % of the population of the Western Balkan believe that corruption practices occur often or very often in a number of public institutions (from central and local government, parliament, hospitals, judiciary and the police). One in six citizens of the Western Balkans citizens had either direct or indirect exposure to a bribery experience with a public official. (Bisogno, 2010: 9, 15) This research is done in 2012 and includes interviews with 25 alumni from different universities in Macedonia, treating the abovementioned issue from clients’, i.e. student’s perspective, based on the experience of corruption during the years of studies. From the analytical approach we concluded that other forms of corruption (favoritism, book buying, sexual services) are more present than bribery or direct payment in our universities, that reporting corruption cases is not occurring from revenge fear and that all student declare that corruption damages education and their future prospect.