The wage system in public higher education institutions as a prerequisite for corruption

Vinokurov Vladimir Anatol'evich ORCID: 0000-0003-0002-3010 Doctor of Law Professor of the Department of Theory and History of State and Law of Saint Petersburg University of the State Fire Service of the Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters 149 Moskovsky ave., Saint Petersburg, 196105, Russia V.Vinokurov.JD@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction

The Constitution of the Russian Federation proclaims our country as a welfare state, whose policy is aimed at creating conditions that ensure a decent life and free human development (Part 1 of Article 7), and also enshrines the right of everyone to work and to remuneration for work without discrimination (Part 3 of Article 37).

These general constitutional norms make it possible to proceed to the consideration of accumulated specific problems in these areas, in particular, in matters of remuneration of teaching staff of state higher educational institutions against the background of regular corruption scandals related to the embezzlement or embezzlement by university leaders of budgetary funds provided for the remuneration of these employees, which, in our opinion, causes relevance of the research topic.

The purpose of the study was to study and analyze the existing array of legal documents concerning the remuneration of teaching staff of public higher education institutions, identify problems and shortcomings that ultimately lead to a decrease in the level of teaching staff, and, consequently, higher education in general, as well as formulate proposals to change the current state of affairs..

Research methodology: general scientific (dialectical, logical, systematic, analysis and synthesis) and special (comparative legal and formal legal) methods.

The main part

The issues of remuneration are described in great detail and in many cases confusingly in Chapter 21 "Wages" of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation (Articles 133-158).

Thus, in accordance with the norms of this chapter, an employee's salary is set by an employment contract in accordance with the pay systems in force at this employer. At the same time, remuneration systems, including the amounts of tariff rates, salaries (official salaries), compensatory surcharges and allowances, incentive surcharges and bonus systems, are established, as stated in the article, "by collective agreements, agreements, local regulations in accordance with labor legislation and other regulatory legal acts, containing norms of labor law" (art. 135). The remuneration system for employees in federal government institutions is established by "collective agreements, agreements, and local regulations in accordance with federal laws and other regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation," taking into account: a) the unified qualification directory of positions of managers, specialists, and employees or professional standards; b) state guarantees on remuneration; c) recommendations of the Russian Tripartite Commission for the Regulation of Social and Labor Relations; d) opinions of the relevant trade unions (unions of trade unions) and employers' associations (2, art. 144).

In accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated October 31, 2002 No. 787 "On the Procedure for Approving the Unified Tariff and Qualification Directory of Workers' Jobs and Professions, the Unified Qualification Directory of Positions of Managers, Specialists and Employees", the Unified Qualification Directory of positions of Managers, Specialists and Employees (CEN) consists of the qualification characteristics of positions containing job responsibilities and requirements for the level of knowledge and qualifications of managers, specialists and employees.

The main state guarantees for the remuneration of employees are fixed in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation (art. 130). These include the minimum wage in the Russian Federation and measures to ensure an increase in the level of real wages. Experts studying the field of law in question consider such state guarantees to be minimal ^{[1, p. 76]}, and a number of authors believe that wage guarantees would be more appropriately called wage protection ^{[2, p. 1111],[3, p. 61],[4, p. 282-288],[5, p . 55]}.

As for the recommendations of the Russian Tripartite Commission for the Regulation of Social and Labor Relations (adopted taking into account the views of all-Russian trade union associations and all-Russian employers' associations), it should be noted that the section on the remuneration system for employees of state and municipal institutions essentially repeats the norms of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, as well as the need to comply with the requirements of the acts the Head of State on issues of remuneration and accounting for certain decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (see, for example, Protocol No. 10pr dated December 23, 2024).

Based on the above standards, the Government of the Russian Federation, by Resolution No. 583 of August 5, 2008, approved the Regulation on the Establishment of Remuneration Systems for Employees of federal budgetary, Autonomous and state-owned institutions, according to which the amounts of salaries (official salaries), salary rates, compensatory payments, amounts and conditions for incentive payments are established by the head of the federal institution. in accordance with the rules and requirements established by legal acts (paragraphs 3-5).

Turning to the qualification requirements that are fundamental when considering a candidate for a job, in particular, for such positions of professorial teaching staff of higher professional education as "teacher" and "professor", we see that to occupy these positions it is necessary, at least, to have a higher professional education and experience as a teacher. work in an educational institution for at least one year, and if you have a postgraduate professional education (postgraduate, residency, adjunct) or a PhD degree – without presentation of work experience, and for the position of "professor", in addition to higher education, you must have a PhD degree and at least 5 years of scientific and pedagogical work experience. or the academic title of professor.

As you can see, there are quite a lot of documents regulating the remuneration system, which are sometimes difficult to understand. But, in the end, these acts do not solve the task set by the President of the Russian Federation on decent pay, expressed in the message dated December 12, 2013, and in some cases, which cannot but cause concern, lead to corruption.

Judging by the professional qualification groups of positions of employees of higher and additional professional education, approved by Order No. 217n of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation dated May 5, 2008, the position of a teacher is assigned to the first qualification level, and the position of a professor is assigned to the fourth. These levels are necessary to determine the minimum salary for the relevant positions. In accordance with the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation dated March 14, 2024 No. 195, the minimum salary for the position of "teacher" is 27,100 rubles, for the position of "professor" – 43,300 rubles. This means that, formally and legally, persons filling these positions will necessarily receive only this specified minimum for their work.

It is known that there is an instruction from the head of state to the Government of the Russian Federation to ensure by 2018 an increase in the average salary of doctors, teachers of educational institutions of higher professional education and researchers to 200 percent of the average salary in the relevant subject of the Russian Federation, as set out in Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated May 7, 2012 No. 597 "On measures to implement state social policy". However, these funds, allocated from the federal budget to solve this problem, have not received an official term or any other name, and therefore they are actually allocated for what is legally fixed, that is, for compensatory and/or incentive payments.

According to regularly submitted reports, the salaries of all these categories of employees have reached the mentioned amount. However, it should be noted that the author drew attention to misleading the President of the Russian Federation in terms of fulfilling his instructions ^[6]. The President of the Russian Federation indirectly acknowledged that there were problems with this assignment from the country's top official when delivering a Message to the Federal Assembly on February 29, 2024, stating the following: "In 2018, the May decrees established wage requirements for teachers and other public sector employees based on the average monthly income from work in a particular subject of the Federation. These provisions of the so-called May decrees must continue to be strictly implemented. At the same time, it is necessary to improve the wage system in the public sector, to achieve income growth for the specialists employed here."

Further, it should be clarified what, according to the legislation, refers to compensatory payments and what to incentive payments. The list of types of compensation payments approved by the Ministry of Health and Social Development of Russia in 2008 provides for payments to workers engaged in heavy work, work with harmful and (or) dangerous and other special working conditions, for work in areas with special climatic conditions, for work in conditions deviating from normal, as well as allowances for work with information, state secrets (Order No. 822 of December 29, 2007); and the List of types of incentive payments includes payments for the intensity and high results of work, for the quality of work performed, for continuous work experience, seniority and bonus payments based on the results of work (Order No. 818 of December 29, 2007).

Based on these standards, an ordinary teacher or professor can only receive payments from the second list, and they are guaranteed only for the length of continuous work or seniority, if they are provided in the institution. All other payments are the subjective discretion of managers at various levels, who, to cover up their not always plausible actions, approve provisions in which they try to determine the "intensity", "high performance" and "quality of work performed", and in such a way as to "legitimately" reduce payments. This approach leads to regular abuse of official position by the heads of state universities, and the number of identified cases does not really decrease. Thus, in 2021-2022, the rectors of the following universities were brought to criminal responsibility: the Russian University of Biotechnology (fraud on a particularly large scale), Samara State University of Communications (misuse of large-scale budget funds by a group of persons by prior agreement), Voronezh State Agrarian University (embezzlement of large-scale funds committed using official regulations), Dagestan State Medical University (abuse of office), Smolensk State University of Sports (embezzlement of funds), Dagestan State Technical University (fraud committed by an organized group on an especially large scale) ^[7]; in 2023, the rector of the All-Russian Academy of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia was arrested for fraud on an especially large scale ^[7]; in 2024, the rector of the Baltic Federal University is suspected of embezzling bonus payments that were supposed to be transferred to university staff ^[9]

Considering that the Constitution of the Russian Federation classifies teaching as creativity (Part 1 of Article 44), questions arise: how and in what ways can "intensity" be assessed and what does "high results" mean in teaching? Among the indicators of intensity, scientists in the field of labor rationing single out "temporary characteristics of the use of working time (the degree of employment of an employee with active work); the pace of work, i.e. the speed of execution of the elements of the labor process per unit of time; the severity of labor, determined by a set of indicators characterizing working conditions; the working areas of employees, i.e. the number of simultaneously serviced facilities, combined professions and functions, etc." ^{[10, p. 462]}.

It is hardly possible to objectively evaluate the work of the teaching staff from these positions, for example, during classes. It will look ridiculous if a professor reads in one pair what he has to explain in two or even three pairs of classes. Of course, you can follow the formal path: not only in terms of the number of classes held (which again depends on the supervisor), but also in terms of the number of published scientific papers. For example, I wrote five articles in a month – get paid, and I wrote one in the period under review – get paid five times less. And the fact that these five articles are empty and did not help either students or science in any way is not taken into account, and one article – high-quality, truly scientific, prepared on the merits of the analyzed issues - is taken into account to a minimum. But even this is not enough for individual science officials. Such figures use non-legalized indicators to generate the amount of additional payments, and those that do not reflect real scientific achievements. For example, data is taken from the Russian Science Citation Index (RISC) program, which is owned by the Scientific Electronic Library Limited Liability Company, formed, according to information published in the open media, by four individuals ^[11]. And if individual indicators of the author's publication activity can be used with a certain degree of probability (for example, the total number of publications), then, for example, the non-legally binding specific indicator "Hirsch index" (citation) "it does not reveal either talent or high quality of scientific publications," as P.A. Skoblikov wrote in his article ^[12]. The "core of the RSCI" and "percentile of the RSCI core" indicators, based on the indexing of scientific papers in foreign and international databases, and according to the "most authoritative" publications (the principle of formation of which, by the way, is not fixed in any way), as N.V. Anisimtsev notes, "do not reflect the substantive characteristics of these references and citations of the author's works: the responses can also be critical – the author is quoted only to illustrate and criticize his scientific misconceptions, and the numbers of citations indicate not the author's achievements, but his failures. Thus, all such "statistical figures" only mislead readers and management regarding the achievements of the researcher" ^[13].

Criticism of these indicators is regularly noted by scientists. ^{[14, pp. 38-51],[15, p. 131-144],[16],[17]}.

Thus, on the one hand, the state regularly allocates the necessary funds in order to fulfill the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation, but on the other hand, it allows university heads to make payments to the teaching staff at their own discretion, according to coefficients and other indicators drawn up by local acts. It is very sad that the specialists who come up with clever and intricate schemes of "honest withdrawal of money" have never been engaged in science and teaching, but at the same time all the doubts that arise (for example, the article is printed, the journal is presented, but there is no elibrary in the library) they don't interpret it in favor of the teacher. For example, in one of the St. Petersburg universities, the number of scientific work points awarded each month of the academic year to one faculty member is calculated using a formula containing 40 indicators, and the vast majority are so formal and have no meaning for science, and are also poorly explained, for example, publication in the university's own journal. It is taken into account (by scores) ten to thirty times less than in journals accredited by the Higher Attestation Commission of Russia.

Since the existing system of remuneration for teaching staff has, in fact, turned universities into shops for issuing documents paid for by students, and also provokes poorly trained and dishonest leaders (who support the existing system, by the way) to commit acts classified as corruption, let us turn to the Soviet experience, noting that in delivering the Message On February 21, 2023, the President of the Russian Federation informed the Federal Assembly about the imminent significant changes in higher education and suggested using all the best "that was in the Soviet education system."

Having reviewed one of the last Soviet documents in the field under consideration – Resolution No. 329 of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the All–Union Central Committee of March 13, 1987 "On increasing salaries of employees of higher educational institutions" (hereinafter also referred to as the Resolution), an unequivocal conclusion arises that in the Soviet Union, the attitude of managers at all levels towards professorshipsthe teaching staff was immeasurably better than it is today.

The official salaries of a professor (doctor of sciences) were 400-550 rubles per month, depending on the length of scientific and pedagogical work, and 160-240 rubles per month for a teacher without a degree (see Appendix No. 1 to the Resolution). In addition, additional payments were provided to these salaries, in particular, for performing the duties of the academic secretary of the council, head of the production practice, head of doctoral and postgraduate studies (up to 100 rubles per month). And this is despite the average monthly salary in the country, which, according to the State Statistics Committee of Russia, was 206.1 rubles in 1986 and 214.4 rubles in 1987.

By the specified resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, it was quite clearly defined that allowances for high achievements in work or for performing particularly important work for the duration of its implementation are introduced for heads of departments, specialists and employees, except for the teaching staff (subp. "b", paragraph 3 of the Resolution), and the amount of these allowances should not exceed up to two percent of the planned salary fund (paragraph 9 of the Resolution).

Conclusions

Thus, we come to the conclusion that a system of remuneration for teaching staff has been created at the state level, which does not reflect the contribution of scientists and university professors to the development of the country in the field of education, which, in fact, nullifies all the efforts of those who try to provide training at a high professional level, which ultimately humiliates the dignity of those who really work. At the same time, this system generates numerous violations on the part of the organizers of the educational process, including those related to criminal offenses related to the embezzlement of unpaid funds by the teacher, that is, prerequisites for corruption are created. It is encouraging that the head of state has announced the need to change this system.

In our opinion, in order to solve these problems and preserve the scientific and teaching potential in the state, it is necessary:

1) to review the system of remuneration for teaching staff, taking the Soviet approach as a basis, that is, to set firm and high salaries (about twice as high as the national average salary) for all state educational institutions of higher education;

2) exclude various kinds of allowances and surcharges for the teaching staff of state higher educational institutions, the payment of which depends on the subjective opinions of managers and on mechanically calculated indicators that do not allow assessing the real contribution of the teaching staff to the education of students, cadets, trainees and scientific activities.;

3) reduce the number of documents that universities must follow when determining salaries of teaching staff.

These proposals will require amendments to the regulatory legal acts that currently regulate the remuneration system for teaching staff in Russia, which will have a positive impact on the educational process as a whole and reduce the number of criminal offenses related to corruption.