A large proportion of parents pay quite legally for their children's studies (the above mentioned 50-60 per cent in the recent years), but what they really purchase is not enhanced academic knowledge or skills adapted to the labour market. They pay for a diploma that is only a basic prerequisite for gaining access to a job. This fact makes the university a less probable institution for knowledge production, transforming it into a machine for extracting a "natural" rent for awarding degrees, with special appeal to young males wishing to avoid mandatory military service. In this sense, post-Soviet universities drop out of the history of world culture and find themselves, to a large extent, as part of the modern economy of rent seekers – an image that is all too closely associated with the New Russia.