The Minister of Education spoke to SKAI 100.3 about historic change and an overall strategy regarding the internationalization of the university Kyriakos Pierrakakis referring to the universities bill.

In this context, he stated that resources from the Recovery Fund will be used for the creation of joint master’s degrees programs between public universities and universities abroad.

He reiterated that only one part of the bill concerns the operation of non-state universities in the country, which will be done with the strictest EU criteria and with state supervision.

“We will support all Greek universities, starting with the Democritus University of Thrace,” said Mr. Pierrakakis, pointing out that the bill increases their funding rate and strengthens their orderly operation.

In particular, Mr. Pierrakakis highlighted as “the core of the bill” the internationalization of higher education in Greece, both through the liberalization of the operation of the public university and the strengthening of its self-administrative operation, as well as through the establishment of branches of foreign university institutions under specific conditions and criteria.

The Minister of Education clarified that “the provisions of the bill for the establishment of non-state non-profit branches of foreign universities constitute the minimum criteria set for ETHAAE to accept to evaluate their file. The branches of the foreign universities themselves will provide for the additional access criteria of the candidates based on the priorities of the parent university.

He reiterated that “the criterion for participating in the nationwide exams and the prescribed score basis for someone to be a candidate is a matter of equality between the two university perspectives” (public university and non-state branch), admitting however that “someone will continue, if they wish and he can respond, seek to study, without the nationwide exams or even after them, at a university in another country as long as he is accepted by the educational institution he wishes based on his own criteria”. “This does not change anything,” the minister emphasized.

He admitted that the ministry faces “double criticism” also from the side of those who reject the connection with the nationwide exams for access to the non-state-non-profit branches of foreign universities and clarified that the choice of the nationwide exams “as a connecting road” adequately addresses issues as well of legitimacy that may be raised by some parties.

“I can see an anxiety of differentiation” he estimated, referring to the attitude of the opposition parties towards the bill so far, Mr. Pierrakakis and repeated that “the time has come to stop being the world’s spelling mistake in this field as well and to keep up with the rest of the planet in an issue that has been resolved for decades.”

The Minister of Education emphasized that “the submission of the bill is a solid step, carefully studied based on the opinions of first-line constitutional experts”, he mentioned the relevant comments of Mr. Venizelou-Skouri, Alivizatou, Manitaki, Spyropoulou and assessed that “society has matured, maybe it is even ahead of the political system in this matter, therefore we expect that the bill should be approved by a large part of the political system, especially the provisions for the public university to be approved by the totality of the political system”.

The Minister of Education made a special reference to the outstanding issues of the engineers of the University of West Attica regarding their professional rights and emphasized that “there are already ongoing committee discussions dealing with the issue and we will soon make the relevant announcements”.

Mr. Pierrakakis argued that “after the bill for higher education will follow the one for school education, which is the most important of all especially for the volume and extent of the changes that need to be made” and reiterated that “the discussion on a national baccalaureate is in the intentions of the ministry and in the government’s program, but it will always be based on the acquis of the balanced dynamics of nationwide exams, the objectivity of which needs to be preserved and strengthened”.