Where's our education going?

We used to have free, entirely state supported educational system. Higher education was available to any person of sufficient academic abilities. We might have had more universities and university graduates than the economy needed, but then high educational standards don't seem to do a nation any harm...Of course, facilities differ between the cities and the countryside, as well as between the centre and the provinces. But on the whole, I think, the system used to work.
After the switch to 'market economy' (perestroika) state funding has been persistently cut down and 'paid' positions appeared in universities, their number increasing every year at the expense of the 'free' places for students.
The scholarship schemes are virtually non-existent, loan offers are scarce and can't seem reliable to the populace that has yet to get to grips with the banking reality (I don't think my American friends can fully understand how different the 'money' reality still is in Russia...e.g. very few people use credit cards...and I'm not kidding!)
One viable option for a promising student who hasn't made it to a free place at a uni is finding a company that will pay his or her fees with a view to employing them after graduation for a certain period of time.
All in all, with around 50 per cent of university places still free of charge, hard-working students, regardless of their financial status, still stand a good chance of getting higher education.
Needless to say, money brightens one's prospects immensely. For instance, we have long been accustomed to having to prop up our limping school education with a crutch of private tuition. (We do it all the time one way or another for our own kids - and I also make a living from it :))
The unpleasant thing is that now the routine is sneaking into unis - with university teachers privately tutoring their students, writing papers and doing projects for them..ugh...and what is worse, selling out grades and credits...One 'paying' student's remark seems to sum it up: when asked to come and sit an end of the term exam in his university, he said,"Why should I come? I've paid for my studies, haven't I?'

Re.:'apparatchik' - that's a Soviet term...'Oligarch' and 'the New Russian' are the big words these days...