The Minister of Education Kyriakos Pierrakakis sent an invitation to the parties for consensus on the major issues of Education from the Parliament, in the context of the discussion and voting of the Greece-Cyprus Agreement which provides for the mutual academic recognition of university degrees between higher education institutions and other approved institutions. .

At the forefront of the debate that opened in the Plenary that the Agreement with Cyprus constitutes the “back door” for the introduction of private education and non-state universities (SYRIZA, KKE, New Left, Pleussi Eleftherias), Mr. Pierrakakis, after emphasizing that “things have matured and we need to step on the accelerator and not the brake“, he called on all open-minded parties to forge consensus and invoked the example of Cyprus, “where AKEL and DISY, two diametrically opposed parties, agreed on non-state universities».

The bill was passed with a large majority by the ND, PASOK-KINAL, the Hellenic Solution and the Spartans.

SYRIZA-PS, KKE, New Left and Niki voted against. Freedom Sailing voted “present”.

“The debate about non-state universities, which we keep opening, also has a Kafkaesque character. Let me say it. It’s not the main strategy either way, but I invite you to open your phones and “Google”. China is run by a communist party, has private universities, as does Vietnam.

There was also something we used to say as a joke in the groups “Only Greece and North Korea do not have non-state universities”. Well, I inform the House that North Korea has a non-state university, a private university, in Pyongyang, but we still have ideological differences. The North Korean government has not. This is for your conclusions” commented Mr. Pierrakakis, addressing the seats of the opposition.

Referring to the Agreement, the Minister of Education observed that we are not talking about “backdoors”, about “strange things” or even about “automations”, but about the fact that the procedure envisaged “simply cuts a piece of bureaucracy and proposes compensatory measures».

That is – as he put it simply – “if you are a physicist and have not taken quantum mechanics, DOATAP invites you to take quantum mechanics as a compensatory measure. This is the process of bureaucratizationhe said. In support of what he said, he thanked the president of DOATAP from the start because he offered a great service in the effort to “regularize” the Organization.

Referring to the broader framework of the government’s Education strategy, the minister in charge said that what the government wants to achieve is a triangle, which has targeted vocational education at one end, the “free university” at the second and the third end of the triangle it is the open school with all the changes that need to be made.

Mr. Pierrakakis also added that the core of the strategy, “the double liberation also applies to the Greek public university“, because – as he noted – it must be freed from excessive state bureaucracy and from excessive state control in order for each university to develop its strategy, in a broader logic of internationalization.

“Recent results have come out that Greece is eighth, if I’m not mistaken, in terms of the number of American students it accepts. This is great. Why not be third, after France and Italy? We can. If you look at the numbers, it’s an achievable goal and it’s an achievable goal by opening up the game, internationalizing the system, opening Greek public universities with even more English-language degrees and master’s degrees, creating the perspective of non-state universities, but above all recognizing the possibility, why not provide the ERASMUS English courses that we currently provide to European students and to American students? More people should come, not only for economic reasons, for reasons that have to do with the soft power of our country. Because higher education systems underpin this possibility of soft power. If you study somewhere, you become closer to that place. Cyprus did it. Not us. This is the truth, period, hyphen, paragraph. Now we will too. And the idea is that we should all do it together. EU law says that it is not just allowed to be interpreted that way, the term it uses is that it must be interpreted that way. And in this sense, this is what we will do as well, taking advantage of the constitutional reform. Because the difference will be that we will not be able, without constitutional reform, to have domestic initiatives, independent. We want them too. We want all the flowers to bloom, with hard, strong, high standards. Because the forearm simply hadn’t entered. And here is the hypocrisy. So this is what we need to solve. Ideally we should all solve this together» said the responsible minister specifically, setting out his reasoning.

Finally, Mr. Pierrakakis referred to the perennial problems that must be resolved and the time required to implement the interventions in Education and called on the parties to contribute to the planning of the reforms. “On the issues we agree on, we should be able to capture them quickly and run ahead so that no further performance gap is created. It is a national issue to be able to improve Education.

In this sense, we are called to be able to forge conditions of the greatest possible agreement between us” he said, addressing the wards of the Parliament, and concluded:

“We will discuss everything along the way, legislation by legislation, from our side with an open mind, with the utmost willingness to forge consents, but in no case without the disposition of further delays. Things have matured. I will say that they are late and we are asked to step on the accelerator and not the brake. So we’ll run. I wish we could run together. I keep as the best good practice from Cyprus this image that I saw when the representatives of the Cypriot parties came to this building, that they do not need to stage or carry out unnecessary disagreements between themselves when it comes to the interest of their homeland, which is the overall framework they built in higher education. Let us all learn from this. For our part, we will do what is necessary to facilitate this outcome».

The parties

On behalf of SYRIZA, the rapporteur Athena Linou stated that with the ratification of this intergovernmental agreement, the Government waives its right and obligation to evaluate degrees awarded by foreign universities. In addition, he said that by using the sister country, Cyprus, for the first implementation of the law, we are artificially opening the back door for the recognition of all foreign universities, whether they are private or public.

Pavlos Christidis, special buyer of PASOK-KINAL, emphasized that self-righteous recognition, ensuring the quality of degrees, as well as a number of other issues that we have put in the public debate must be a priority in order to create a culture, a school and a university that guarantees an even stronger Greece in 2030.

The special buyer of the KKE, Ioannis Delis stated that this agreement tests the endurance and tolerances of the institutional framework for DOATAP as it was formed by the relevant law, while the agreement makes use of Article 28 of the Constitution for interstate agreements, in which the bill for private universities prepared by the Ministry of Education is also expected to be supported.

From the Hellenic Solution, Sofia Asimakopoulou emphasized that the purpose of this agreement is to facilitate and simplify procedures for the recognition of academic titles obtained in one of the two parties and to further strengthen relations between Cyprus and Greece in matters of higher education and added that Cyprus is an example to follow.

Charalambos Katsivardas from the Spartans explained that his party is voting for the bill because it is not held by ideological anchors and emphasized that these interstate agreements should be strengthened and that there should be a safety valve to equalize the quality characteristics of these universities.

“The ratification of the Agreement is another step towards the discrediting of Greek public universities, towards the unconditional recognition of degrees without academic and evaluative criteria, but on the basis of international agreements and the requirements of the private higher education market” argued Meropi Tsoufi from the New Left.

For a bill that does not ensure the quality of the degree, it does not ensure what is desired for degrees that really cope at a high level, said the specialist buyer of Niki, N. Papadopoulos.

On behalf of Plevsis Eleftheria, Alexandros Kazamias, after declaring his party’s principled opposition to the operation of private universities in Greece, said that the Agreement does not provide sufficient guarantees for the defense of the public nature of higher education in Greece as defined by the Constitution .

“The conclusion of such agreements seals an overall strategy that was never drawn up behind closed doors, never made secret. It is part of an overall strategy that the Government has drawn up and is consistently and consistently implementing since 2019 in the direction of internationalization and extroversion, with the institutionalization of the possibility for Greek HEIs to enter into partnerships with foreign universities for joint and double degrees, common research centers, joint summer study programs, etc., with the liberalization of the framework for the establishment of foreign language study programs and the attraction of students from abroad, with the institutionalization of the almost automatic academic recognition of foreign titles, putting an end to delays and bureaucracy. A policy for higher education aimed at institutions that are autonomous, self-governing, outward-looking, in step with the labor market, able to follow the developments required by the fourth and perhaps the fifth industrial revolution and artificial intelligence, institutions capable of having a dominant position on the international academic map» noted the ND rapporteur, Ioanna Lytrivi.