Education funding for labor market needs
Seeking to adapt to an ever-changing environment, the Education Ministry plans to provide incentives to universities to orient their curricula toward modern developments in science and technology, the demands of the economy and the needs of the labor market.
The shift in the orientation of universities is expected to help both graduates find jobs more easily and the Greek economy and businesses to grow.
At the same time, linking the funding of universities to their performance will lead to the restructuring of low-demand departments based on subject matter, while not excluding their mergers.
The new initiatives also come amid growing concern among academics over the many vacancies left in many departments in provincial areas as well as in the humanities after the recent announcement of the admission thresholds to universities.
This philosophy of labor market orientation pervades the new framework law which was published in the Government Gazette on July 21. The implementation of the relevant ministerial decision is expected in the coming days.
Kathimerini understands that institutes of higher education must complete the steps to implement the law by December 2023.
Meanwhile, a survey is under way on the progress of graduates in terms of their professional rehabilitation.
The survey is carried out using a methodology adopted in the European Union – in order to obtain comparable data at the European level – at the national level for the 25 institutes of higher education and all their departments.
The reports received by the National Authority for Higher Education from the members of the Evaluation and Accreditation Council per scientific discipline and the processing of the data by the Ministry of Education show clearly that undergraduate curricula are difficult to adjust to the rapid developments in science and changes in the labor market.
This is seen to reflect the broader assessment that there is an overabundance of departments in so-called saturated fields while there are significant shortages in the labor market.
Indicatively, Greece has 27 computer science departments, which are considered too few considering the digital transformation of the economy.
