Government to present bill on private universities before year-end
The government will present legislation allowing the operation of private universities before the end of the year, Education Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said on Friday.
The minister said the state university remains “the flagship” of tertiary education in Greece. “We cannot, however, continue to preserve in the country a global exception, and a peculiar state monopoly on Greek tertiary education. This is what we are trying to resolve,” he said in an interview with state-run broadcaster ERT.
Pierrakakis said the ministry will table draft legislation in parliament immediately after presenting it to the cabinet before the end of the year “to move quickly and take advantage of the great potential that we have not tapped into for so many years for various reasons.”
Earlier in October, Kathimerini reported that the ministry is expected to use a 2020 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union to allow private universities in the country, despite Article 16 of the Constitution expressly stating that tertiary education establishments must be public.
The European Court case concerned a Hungarian university reform law narrowly tailored to force Central European University, founded by Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist George Soros in 1991, to relocate. The court found the Hungarian bill incompatible with European legislation.
Pierrakakis also stated that a digital remedial teaching program for high school students will start in February with two subjects, mathematics and language, adding that the goal is to provide digital remedial teaching free of charge across Greece in September 2024.
