Clash over university entrance exams
ND decries Tsipras’ pledge to abolish minimum admission grade as cynical move to woo youth
The election debate moved to education after leftist opposition SYRIZA’s pledge to abolish the minimum admission threshold to enter university as of this year.
In response, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis denounced the pledge by SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras as nothing short of a lame attempt to reel in 17-year-olds, who can vote, and 18-year-olds, in particular, who are about to sit university entrance exams.
“[Young kids] need to know that when they finish school they will go to a higher institution where they will get a degree that will have an impact and get them a decent job with a good income,” Mitsotakis said.
“This is our vision for the new generation. Not to give them admission to universities with virtually no effort whatsoever by abolishing the entrance threshold,” he said, adding that it is not in the interest of students to go to a university from which they will probably never graduate. “We are not serving them in this way.”
The importance that the SYRIZA president attaches to this issue is also evident in his use of TikTok, an online medium used by many young people.
Tsipras insisted that “we do not want to put up barriers to access to higher education for those children who have the basic potential to succeed.”
Ruling New Democracy appears determined to raise this issue to highlight the cynical electoral exploitation by SYRIZA, with the secretary of ND’s Political Committee, Pavlos Marinakis, deriding what he called “vulgar politics” to tamper with examinations at the eleventh hour.
Tsipras returned to the issue while speaking to ANT1 on Thursday. He estimated that the admission threshold was not introduced by the government to increase the level of admissions, but was done for two reasons: “First, to slowly close departments and reduce public spending on higher education, and the second reason, very obvious, to have a pool of customers at private colleges,” he said.
Meanwhile, SYRIZA MP Kostas Zouraris caused a stir on Thursday after saying on ANT1 TV that the admission threshold “sent kids, the rich kids, the damn kids who have money” to private commercial colleges. Tsipras made it clear that he does not share this view in any way, with New Democracy stressing that “in a normal party, Zouraris would not even be a candidate.”
