leo i

Idiotic Universities

Idiot, in Greek means a “private individual”. In classical Greece, a private citizen not involved in the public affairs was considered a bad character, hence the derogatory meaning of the word in the English language. In modern Greek, however, idiotic university means literary the private university.

The constitution of Greece forbids the establishment of private universities. Higher learning in Greece is a state business under the oversight of the Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs. This state business is now in trouble and plagued by unprecedented unrest.

The cause of the unrest is an anticipated constitutional amendment that will allow the establishment of private universities in Greece. The amendment is supported by the center-right governing party and the center-left major opposition party. Together the two parties represent nearly 90% of the Greek electorate.

The federation of university teacher unions in Greece (POSDEP) has called an indefinite strike, but only a small number of academic departments have been affected. A much larger number of academic departments, however, have been shut down by student sit-in protests against the prospect of private universities. As of this writing, over 200 academic departments have suspended their operations because of the sit-ins.

The Greek government claims that the student sit-ins have been instigated by the teacher unions. Faculty, says the goverment, are achieving their goal of shutting down a department, without going on strike (and losing a portion of their salary). According to the Greek press, no evidence of student-teacher union collusion exists. However the website of the Greek federation of university teacher unions maintains a detailed account of the sit-ins and related student activism.

A student sit-in has paralyzed the medical school at the University of Athens, since early May 2006. Student patrols are keeping professors and staff away from their offices. It is worth noting that the Greek law governing student unions and their role in university governance is quite arcane. Student unions are not required to establish a quorum during their meetings. A very small minority (less than 10% of the student body) can inact a sit-in occupation of a department or entire college.

As the semester draws to an end, there is a real risk that students will miss their final exams. The student union at the medical school in Athens is considering a proposal from the school’s administration to allow faculty access to the school to administer final exams. Some professors have objected to this because students have missed over a month of classes. Professors Moutsopoulos and Roussos wrote an op-ed in the daily Kathimerini, questioning if the university is reduced to an examination center granting degrees without much regard to teaching or research.

More than 30 years of goverment and political meddling with academia has left Greek universities in a lamentable state. Greek schools rank very poorly in comparisons with other countries. In the Shanghai ranking of the best 500 universities in the world, only two of Greece’s 21 universities appear (in the 200s and 300s respectively). Public funding for research and higher education in Greece ranks among the lowest in the European Union and the OECD.

An arcane legal framework gives student unions an absolute majority in the academic electorate that elects the university rector (president), deputy-rectors, deans, and department heads. As a result, candidates’ political affiliations carry more weight than their academic accomplishments. At four universities professors with fewer than 5 publications in peer reviewed journals, were elected rectors.

This arcane framework also grants university campuses a unique asylum status, forbidding law enforcement agencies from stepping foot on campus. The asylum can be suspended for brief periods only after a faculty senate vote and it’s usually too late by then. Campuses become havens, not only for free speech, but for petty crime and, occasionally for more serious crime. Intruders often take advantage of a student sit-in to break into university buildings and loot computer and other equipment while police watch from a legally proscribed distance, unable to intervene and protect the property of the public university. A few months ago a student who was patroling a building seized by a sit-in was seriously injured when he tried to stop looters who attacked him while carrying away laptops and other high-tech equipment from the facility. Ironically, the asylum status was instituted as a free speech measure by a dictatorship in the early 1970s to appease mounting international pressure for human rights in the country.

In recent years, the Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs has opened several new schools and departments around the country. In Greek-style pork barrel, these schools have their departments scattered over several towns in a region. For example, the University of Thrace has its engineering school in one town, its medical school in a town 80 miles to the east, and the law school in a town in between.

The government in Greece expects that the proposed constitutional amendment in favor of private universities will boost the quality of higher education in the country by making public universities more competitive. Maybe so. Still, the state will continue to be responsible for the welfare of public universities, where the vast majority of Greek students will pursue their educational endeavors. The government must develop a competitive and realistic plan to support and improve higher education at public schools.

In the same issue of the newspaper Kathimerini where Professors Moutsopoulos and Russos published their op-ed, Mr. Andreas Petroulakis, one of Greece’s sharpest cartoonists, portrays the absurdity of university asylum in a caustic cartoon. A Turkish fighter jet resting on the rooftop of a Greek university building where the students are having a sit-in, while the pilot radios back to his base: “Don’t worry, they [Greeks] cannot intercept me … they have something here called university asylum”.

Leo Irakliotis teaches computer science at the University of Chicago. He spent four agonizing years at a Greek university prior to emigrating to the US in 1990 to complete his studies and earn his PhD.

June 4th, 2006 Posted by leo | Academia | 7 comments