Students are using increasingly ingenious methods to gain entry to top institutes, whose qualifications are a passport to lucrative jobs.

The surrogate students are only the latest symptom of an epidemic of corruption that has gripped the Russian higher education system. A report published this week by the Ministry of Education and Moscow's Higher School of Economics (HSE) showed that more than $300m (£165m) was paid in bribes to enter the country's educational establishments last year.

Article continues "In our school alone this spring we caught four impostors who were attempting to sit the entrance tests in place of others," said Grigory Kantorovich, deputy head of the HSE. "Those were not isolated cases; it's a whole, specialised business."

Such corruption is multiplied by a burgeoning market in coursework and diplomas written by teachers and lecturers, which can be bought over the internet.

A direct bribe to lecturers to enter an institution can be up to $30,000 for a top law faculty, the HSE estimates.

A police spokesman said there was no dedicated unit for tackling corruption in education, but individual cases were investigated if evidence was handed over.