A system about to collapse, students unable to take exams or attend lectures due to occupations, strikes, never-ending elections and riots. Professors who come in late or don’t show up at all, sending their PhD subordinates to do their job.
This is the University landscape in a state that spends more per student than almost any other EU member, while at the same time the quality of university education offered is dismally low, forcing top Greek students who can afford it or gain internships to study in the UK, Germany, America, anywhere but Greece.
In fact, more than 40,000 Greek students are studying abroad – one of the highest ratios in the world according to population size. So why is it that when Anna Diamantopoulou, the Minister of Education, brought an admittedly well designed education bill that would modernise the system on which-surprise,surprise- for the first time in the two years of the country’s crisis, both the governing socialists and opposition conservatives agreed, students and academics alike went ballistic?
A family business
University teachers have strongly opposed the new law that allows for independent evaluations of professors. And why wouldn’t they? Being a professor in Greece is a profitable, “high status” family business. Last year John Panaretos, then General Secretary of the Ministry of Education, decided to merge the department of Social Theology of Thessaloniki with its associate department of Theology.
The reason: the whole department was basically run by one family. Almost all professors were somewhat related to each other: daughters, sisters, cousins, in laws. The situation is similar in University departments that carry a high social prestige like the Medical School of Athens, where many professors share the same family names.
A political party business
With an exceptionally high percentage of votes in university bodies –up to 40%, DAP and PASP -the open front organizations of the major political parties-use their block vote in the elections of deans and rectors to negotiate whether an exam period is going to be repeated or determine who is an ideal candidate for a PhD. An example of this ongoing nonsense cannibalistic dispute, was when DAP painted raw chickens green (the logo colour of their political antipodes PASP) and flaunted them in front of the Greek media! At the same time left-wing student groups fight “intensification” of studies, as they think ten years is a pretty decent time for someone to obtain a degree.
No research, thank you
You would think that allowing private sponsorship of science, technology and business programmes at state universities would thrill Greek students whose level of research studies compared to their European and North American counterparts is closer to high school assignments. But Greek students are not accustomed to research as the whole curriculum is usually restricted to what may be included in a couple of textbooks (often dated) and are not even bothered to research journals at the library.
Eternal Students-non ending exam periods
Life-long learning takes a whole new meaning in Greek Universities. In actual practice, once you are in, it’s almost impossible not to graduate, even if that means your hair has turned gray and you have three kids. At a Greek university students take an average of 7.6 years to complete a first degree that in the UK would normally take three years! Tuition is free and students have the mandatory right to take examinations over and over again until they pass a course resulting in the widespread practice of allowing them to take an inordinate twenty, thirty or even forty (!) courses the last year of studies.
Corruption
The symptoms of the Greek disease of corruption are evident across the universities’ hierarchy. From students who cheat and switch places to take exams “to help a friend”, to rectors making “a couple of favours” to political parties leaders to ensure their re-election and administrative employees who cook the books, mismanagement reigns with the highlight being ex-PM’s Kostas Simitis pension that instead of being donated to the library of Pantion University where he used to teach, ended up in the pockets of the administrative stuff!
The asylum debate
The word asylum – etymologically an inviolable place –is used or in case of the Greek context abused-in order to describe the freedom that exists within the Greek universities. This is the case not only for lecturers and students but also for drug-dealing gangs and hooded “known-unknown anarchists” who for the past thirty years trash downtown Athens and then hide under the university asylum umbrella in order to work on their favorite hobby of stockpiling petrol bombs while confused police officers stand right across the street not knowing what to do.
A couple of months ago the “asylum trend” was also sported by illegal immigrants who occupied the Athens Law School with the valuable contribution of leftists who transferred them all the way from Crete and moved them onto the campus in order promote what they named as “the largest mass hunger strike in Europe.”No matter how hard one attempts to imagine immigrants occupying the LSE or the UCL it’s almost impossible to picture around four hundred people marching through the center of London-or any European capital for that matter- and occupying a university building without anyone even asking them where exactly they are heading!
Crisis and the University Reforms-not necessarily a bad thing
A chronically inefficient university sector, persistent corruption and academics and students’ unions have thwarted progress in the Greek Universities. Both the Minister of Education, Anna Diamantopoulou and the Prime Minister have stated that universities belong to the Greek people and not to one or other interest group and their circle. It is time to prove that they mean what they say and do their job: apply the law.
After decades of expecting everything to be done for them by the state, it’s time for Greek university students and teachers to discover the satisfaction of doing things for themselves. After all, the University is not just about learning a couple of textbooks by heart and befriending political parties and professors to get the desirable “fiver” (Greek threshold to pass a course). And if the country’s economic woes are the only effective incentive that will push reforms to put an end to the inflexible research and dated university systems which do not systematically evaluate research quality or offer competitive grants-so be it.
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