Chelyabinsk SUSU is looking for hundreds of millions from the wage fund. Wagner announced “figures for Moscow” to the team and attracted the security forces

Experts have uncovered a scheme to deceive the Russian Ministry of Education

The story of the speech of SUSU Rector Alexander Vagner, who boasted to his subordinates about salaries that were several times higher than their real income, which received wide public discussion, revealed several pain points at once, experts of the publication believe. This is a serious underfunding of universities, and the formation of indicators “exclusively for Moscow,” which “creates a distorted picture of reality,” and one of the largest proportions of part-time employees for all industries. In the educational institution itself, they talk about other “know-how” that improves its performance, but negatively affects the quality of the scientific process, education and the attitude of teachers. In addition, according to experts, with such inattention to internal work on the part of the rector, who views the university more as a “launching pad for himself personally,” SUSU will very quickly begin to lose federal ranking positions. A number of interlocutors agree that the difference between the declared and real wealth of scientists at the largest university in the Southern Urals should be of interest to law enforcement agencies – we are talking about hundreds of millions of rubles monthly, which people have never seen and probably will not see, but about which they confidently and publicly declares the head of the establishment.

The expenditure of the wage fund of SUSU employees should be the subject of inspection by the prosecutor’s office of the Chelyabinsk region, several interlocutors of the publication stated.

According to open sources, in 2022, educational activities at the university were provided by 1,228 people, of whom more than 66% (that is, at least 811 people) had scientific degrees. Based on the statement of Rector Alexander Wagner about the average salary of scientific workers at 215 thousand rubles, all together they should receive 174.2 million rubles per month. At the same time, the SUSU teachers themselves, with whom we were able to communicate, claim that they have never seen such amounts.

According to university staff, “an associate professor receives no more than 40 thousand rubles a month, a professor – no more than 60 thousand if he is engaged exclusively in teaching.”

“It is unlikely that Wagner tried to embellish the situation in order to raise the mood in the team before the elections. Apparently, he used the numbers he was given and believed what he was saying. Law enforcement agencies should ask themselves where the difference between the declared and actual income of employees went.”– commented one of the deputies. Pravda UrFO sent a corresponding request to the prosecutor’s office of the Chelyabinsk region, it was registered and transferred for work.

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Note, in addition to what was voiced in the political scientist’s blog Alexandra Podoprigory the figure of 215 thousand rubles Alexander Wagner also named other amounts far from reality: 76.7 thousand rubles – the average salary of ordinary teachers, 106.5 thousand – associate professors, 157.1 thousand – professors. In addition, at SUSU, 143 people, according to Wagner, receive more than a million rubles a month.

A request was sent to the university press service about the reasons for the discrepancy between the announced figures and reality. Interlocutors familiar with the accounting department of SUSU explained that the culprit is a unique methodology for calculating the level of wages, which is used to increase target indicators and implement the May decrees of the President of the Russian Federation.

“Suppose a person received a salary of 25 thousand rubles while working at a fixed rate. And then an order appears to increase salaries without additional sources of financing. The same person is transferred to part-time, while maintaining a salary of 25 thousand rubles, but according to the documents it turns out that the salary is 50 thousand rubles. That is, the employee’s salary was doubled, but for some reason he did not want to work full time,” – they say at SUSU.

Such calculations, according to our interlocutor, led to the emergence of 143 “millionaires” at the university, which Alexander Wagner announced. But in this case, in addition to salaries, the amounts that employees receive while working with grants were also taken into account.

“A person works part-time as a professor and receives grants for another 0.1 time as a research assistant. Everyone who works with grants settles for tiny fractions of the rates, since the funds they have depend only on the size of the grant. At a rate of 0.1 you can receive a grant of 50-100 thousand rubles per month. But if you recalculate this amount by the size of the bet, you get from 500 thousand to a million rubles, and then you can multiply it by two, since the recipient, let us remind you, is employed part-time. They provide such amounts for reporting to the Ministry of Education and Science,” – states another interlocutor.

And although a small part of the team works with grants, the “average temperature in the hospital” as a result turns out to be quite high.

“These are long-known management decisions, a way to disguise the true state of affairs. In reality, no one has ever received such money, but there seems to be no deception here. On the other hand, in this situation, we can probably talk about one of the forms of fraud. Because what kind of labor organization can we talk about when they pay that kind of money for 0.1 wages? What kind of cosmic efficiency is this?” – another SUSU employee argues.

According to industry experts, when talking about the real level of wages, it is worth taking the median salary as a basis, that is, the range of wages that the largest number of employees receive. However, in this case, the picture for the university will no longer be so rosy, according to agency sources.

“This situation has exposed a number of systemic problems,” the economist comments. Sergey Gordeev. – On the one hand, this is a problem of balance between the requirements for the quality of education and the financing of universities. As a rule, the requirements are not met by the required amount of funds. On the other hand, the calculation of calculated indicators creates a distorted picture. As a result, the proportion of part-time employees in universities is higher than in other industries and organizations.”

According to Gordeev, a similar situation has been observed for more than five years, and not only at SUSU. In this case, the number of hours worked by the teacher is not taken into account. Often, educational institutions have to refuse the services of associate professors and professors, since it is more profitable if the course is taught by a teacher who does not need to pay extra. In addition, educational institutions are limited in their ability to increase prices for contract tuition fees.

SUSU employees themselves add that the university also has its own know-how, which worsens the quality of education, but, paradoxical as it may sound, improves performance.

“The coefficients of useful participation have been introduced in such a way that it is impossible to fulfill them. Today, for example, the main KPI for a SUSU teacher is how many B’s and A’s he gives. The number of uncertified students reduces the teacher’s salary and pushes him to award points without a real assessment of knowledge. Otherwise, you can lose 12-15 thousand rubles a month.”– said one of the teachers.

According to political scientist Alexander Podoprigora, the rector of SUSU (pictured left) embellished data on teachers’ salaries in order to raise the mood before the gubernatorial elections

Also, to maximize the retention of the contingent, tests and assignments are being introduced that a student who is not attending classes can complete online. No one sees how this is done, but this is a guarantee that the student will not be expelled, because he will still gain some points.

“The new rector of SUSU does everything for the sake of beautiful numbers that can be shown to Moscow. In one of his interviews, he said that Chelyabinsk for him is a city of opportunities. That is, at the first opportunity, he will leave, as did, for example, another Varangian rector, Alexander Miroshnichenko, who worked for a year at South Ural State Medical University and moved to Moscow. The staff of the medical university learned that it was his last day on that very day. Wagner also does not perceive SUSU as his farm,” – say industry experts.

It should be noted that in the spring of 2024, SUSU was involved in a scandal related to the reduction of about 600 budget places. Officially, this decision was explained by the position of the Russian Ministry of Education, but the publication’s sources believe that the initiative came not from the federal authorities, but from the university itself, where last year they simply could not recruit the required number of freshmen, and had to announce an additional enrollment.

Raymond “Ray” Daniels

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