Acknowledgements
Above all, I wish to express my gratitude to all of the contributors who participated in this book project without whom this publication would be not have been possible. We might have different views on the terminology of corruption; we might approach our research in various national, cultural and institutional contexts and roles differently, but we all have one thing in common—we are concerned about corruption in higher education. We are also committed to starting a global dialogue about this issue across disciplines and between scholars, practitioners, and decision makers.
I am very grateful to Hans de Wit, Philip Altbach, Laura Rumbley and Rebecca Schendel at the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) at Boston College for providing the platform for this important discussion in the global context. I am especially indebted to Liz Reisberg, a CIHE Research Fellow, for her patient and careful editing of this volume.
I am very thankful to the editors of International Higher Education (IHE), Higher Education in Russia and Beyond (HERB), University World News (UWN) and Inside Higher Education who have granted permission to use material originally published in their pages. All texts have been expanded and modified—some of them significantly.
At the University of St.Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland, I would like to thank Ulrich Schmid, Sandra King-Savić and the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe (GCE-HSG) for providing me with the stimulating environment to support this project and others.
I wish to thank Alena Ledeneva, who inspired and guided me through several projects on “informality.” I am grateful to Lawrence Lessig, Mark Somos, William English, and other colleagues at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University for sharing their views on institutional corruption. I thank Markku Kivinen, Vladimir Gel’man, Katalin Miklóssy, Anna-Liisa Heusala, and other colleagues at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki for the opportunity to discuss my ideas with practitioners, including experts from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. I benefited greatly from discussions on various occasions with Irene Glendinning, Martin Huber, Mihaylo Milovanovitch, Manja Klemenčič, Elvira Leontyeva, Abel Polese, Andrei Rostovtsev, Nataliya Rumyantseva, Yaroslav Prytula, and Maria Yudkevich.
Finally, I would like to thank my husband and our daughter for sharing my devotion to my profession and academic writing, as well as their very supportive team spirit.