The article considers the typical mechanisms of corruption in the Russian education. The authors analyze the spread of societal attitudes that make this corruption possible. An educational institution is considered here as a monopoly that dictates its conditions to consumers.: parents and their children. By analyzing numerous surveys conducted among parents with different social status and from different parts of the country, the authors arrive at the conclusion that unless the situation begins to change, the country will be faced with the emergence of a caste society in which different population groups reproduce themselves and continue to drift apart from each other.