On the State of Greek Universities

[I am grateful to Vasso Kindi for accepting our invitation to contribute her reflections after The Guardian reported that austerity measures pushed the University of Athens to suspend operations.—ES]

Greek Universities suffer from nepotism, political patronage, inertia, and structures that breed favoritism and unaccountability. They are in desperate need of reform independently of the current financial crisis. Moreover, most Greek graduates were, until recently, channeled to the public sector where they were hired merely by only showing their Universities degrees. This meant that, for a great number of students, learning mattered less than obtaining the degree itself. 

The University of Athens (UoA) is currently shut down because there is a strike of the administrative staff. They are protesting against plans, required by the memorandum signed by the Greek government and its creditors, to reduce 12,500 employees of the public sector by the end of 2013. The universities, which are all state-owned, will lose 1349 members of their administrative personnel and the UoA 498 out of 1375. Those who are on strike have prohibited access to all university buildings. We cannot have classes, exams, register new students. We cannot even go to our offices.

To pressure the government to revoke the measure, the Rectors of the Greek universities have declared that the universities cannot function with these cuts, and have refused to designate the personnel to be let go. They have forced the government pick, more or less arbitrarily, those who will leave. In 2006, the number of administrative employees more than doubled at UoA when the conservative government, for reasons of political patronage, turned, one night, without any proper procedure, a raft of researchers and research assistants paid by grants to administrative personnel paid by the state. Given that the number of students and faculty has not significantly changed since 2006, I am sure that if the rectors want, they can find a solution to the current problem. 

The university will certainly suffer if it suddenly loses so many employees. It is obviously devastating for the employees themselves. But the university Rectors, who have been elected to their posts with the votes of faculty, students and administrative staff, should not abdicate their responsibility to secure that the universities will continue to function. Nor should the university leadership engage in political maneuvering.

The Greek constitution mandates that Greek universities are autonomous but state-owned. The constitution does not allow private non profit or for profit institutions in higher education anywhere in Greece. This measure was first introduced by the military junta in the late 1960s in order to completely control higher education. After the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, this constitutional article was retained with a different rationale, namely, a statist understanding of higher education. Until the present crisis, state funding secured a free education for students and relieved faculty from the burden of seeking funds. But passive dependence on state support has bred inertia and established special ties between the leadership of the universities and government officials. It also contributed to a political climate that saw attracting grants from the private sector with suspicion.

While I am painting a grim general picture here, I do not want to slight a great number of excellent students, undergraduate and postgraduate, who on top of their qualifications have, or acquire, the ability to survive a quite unhelpful system. There continue to be departments and faculty, who strive for academic excellence in an environment of great adversity in Greece.

Before and independently of the present economic crisis, there were two attempts to reform Greek Universities in the direction of aligning them with institutions in the rest of Europe, in 2006 (by a conservative government) and 2009-10 (by a socialist government),. Both efforts faced great resistance from two fronts: (i) the so-called “deep university,” that is—members of the faculty in power positions with vested interest in the status quo; and (ii) the radical left-wing activists, both students and faculty, who cry out against privatization, commercialization, neo-liberal policies, the Bologna process, and the like. While I share the serious concerns of the latter, they have a great deal of unreality in the current Greek situation. Whatever one thinks of the austerity measures imposed on Greece after the collapse of state finances, Greek universities and much of the Greek public sector suffer from a perverted statism, largely responsible for our current ills, rather than neo-liberal policies.

Serious academics, who would like to see Greek Universities reformed, are squeezed between conservative, which is in some cases self-serving, inertia and left wing utopianism, which in some cases is no more than empty reverberation of slogans. Stereotypical, idealist slogans have come to serve as smokescreen covering the real problems and leaving them untouched. It’s ironic to have the radical left defend today what it unsuccessfully fought against in the past. Radical rhetoric ends up defending a problematic status quo.

Nowadays, with the financial crisis, the state can no longer fund the universities as it used to and the public sector is no longer a viable option for employment for our graduates. The universities must change, as the rest of the country has and we have to suffer as the rest of the country does. It is not fair to exclude universities from the burden we, as citizens, have voted to support. It would be much better if we had a reasoned discussion about how to ensure that the budgetary pain is distributed fairly, so we can take into account the significance and potential of higher education in the urgent efforts to lift the country from its current malaise.

Vasso Kindi,

Associate Professor

Department of Philosophy and History of Science

University of Athens, Greece