Defining corruption, tolerating corruption: heterogeneity in student attitudes toward corruption in Ukrainian higher education during wartime

Corruption in higher education undermines institutional integrity and socializes future professionals into practices that may persist across their careers. This study examines the structure and heterogeneity of corruption attitudes among 479 Ukrainian university students surveyed in February 2025, during the third year of full-scale war. Applying latent class analysis and network psychometrics -- methods not previously combined in this context -- we identify two distinct attitudinal profiles: ``Narrow Definers'' (64%) who recognize fewer behaviors as corrupt yet show higher tolerance (48% endorsing conditional justification), and ``Broad Definers'' (36%) who maintain expansive definitions alongside lower tolerance (26% justification). This inverse relationship between definitional breadth and corruption tolerance suggests that students accommodate to corrupt environments through definitional narrowing rather than explicit acceptance. Network analysis reveals nepotism and extortion as central nodes bridging corruption definitions to justification attitudes, identifying potential intervention leverage points. Discrimination was reported by 7.3% and sexual harassment by 1.7%, likely underestimates given established reporting barriers. These findings demonstrate that corruption attitudes are neither monolithic nor randomly distributed but organize into coherent configurations with distinct implications for anti-corruption education. Interventions targeting gray-zone practices like nepotism, rather than focusing exclusively on already-condemned behaviors like bribery, may produce broader attitudinal effects through the attitude network structure we document.