Referring to the Kerameos bill for higher education, Mr. Tsipras said that it is very problematic and is submitted without any prior consultation.
The withdrawal of the bill of the Ministry of Education requested the president of SYRIZA-PS, Alexis Tsipras, who today had a meeting with the presidency of the Synod of Rectors and specifically the rectors of the Technical University of Crete, Evangelos Diamantopoulos, the University of Ioannina, Triantaphyllos Albanou and NTUA.
Referring to the bill on higher education that was brought to consultation by the government, the president of SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, Alexis Tsipras, among other things, supported:
«The Government is submitting a particularly problematic bill for the Universities, without any prior consultation with the university community. A bill that comes to supplement the Minimum Admission Base it left last year and will leave tens of thousands of out-of-university candidates this year to push them into private colleges. This bill, in our estimation, attempts to transform the academic and representative University into a University that resembles a private company.».
Having mentioned that Greek Universities«Despite their understaffing and underfunding, they are very high in the international rankings, some at 3% and many more at 8% worldwide, he noted.».
Mr. Tsipras also claimed: “The need to change the country’s development model towards a “knowledge economy” towards a clear productive transformation that presupposes the existence of highly specialized human resources needs to be understood. For this to happen we need a public, democratic, meritocratic, quality University. I’m afraid the bill does the exact opposite. Abolishes the constitutionally guaranteed self-government of the Universities. It institutes the Board of Directors with 6 elected internal and 5 non-elected external members, brings together all the basic functions of the Universities and creates an institution particularly prone to transactions and customer relations. The appointment of single-person bodies but also the strict hierarchical structure of the new university is reminiscent of a return to the status of chair with all the powers of the primary professors. Postgraduate Programs and Scholarships will now be offered only to students with outstanding performance, regardless of social needs, and not to financially ill people as is the case today, depriving the academic community of a wealth of talent. Along with all this, destructively flexible forms of work are introduced. In addition, there is no commitment to increase funding and create new teaching positions when we in conditions of exceptional budgetary discipline had given 1650 teaching positions and passed a law that will obligatorily announce any vacancy that retires, something that the Minister refuses to do and illegal. Finally, the procedures for the academic recognition of foreign degrees are completely opaque.».
Alexis Tsipras pledged to repeal the law if it is voted on and recalled SYRIZA’s proposals and commitments for higher education:
– Democratic structure of administration and operation of the University by ensuring the representativeness of the electoral process for the promotion of sole proprietors and collective governing bodies.
– Doubling the funding of universities, in four years.
– Doubling the number of faculty members, over a period of four years – 2,000 appointments per year. Strict observance of the law for the announcement of any position vacated by the retirement of a faculty member.
– Free operation / study of the Postgraduate Programs (MSc), coverage at public expense of their inelastic expenses.
– Radical strengthening of scholarships to young scientists, doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellow.
– Immediate abolition of the Minimum Import Base. Establishment of the possibility of free access with an upgraded high school diploma in University Departments, where the demand and the offered positions allow it.
– Operation of the two-year university vocational education programs, level 5 of the European Vocational Qualifications Framework (ie like IEK), in which the graduates of Vocational High Schools (EPAL) will be admitted without exams.
