Greece is in the middle of a serious debate over whether to allow private universities to operate for the first time, an...

Greece is in the middle of a serious debate over whether to allow private universities to operate for the first time, and a law professor at one of the country's top institutions is raising pointed concerns about how it's being done. Grigoris Kalfelis, a professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki's Law School, published an opinion piece in To Vima laying out both the case for private universities and the significant problems he sees with the current approach. His core concern is a blunt one: private law schools in Greece will accept students who scored around 13,000 points on national entrance exams, while the public Law School in Thessaloniki requires roughly 17,280 points. In plain terms, weaker students with wealthy parents get in, while stronger students without money do not. Kalfelis notes that the Aristotle University, one of the largest universities in Europe, received close to 50 million euros in state funding before the financial crisis. Today that figure has collapsed to roughly 12 million. No government, left or right, has ever brought education spending up to European averages, and university professors are paid accordingly. He does acknowledge a real counterargument. Greek students who failed to get into public law schools were already leaving for private universities in Cyprus, paying around 8,000 euros a year in tuition. Private universities in Greece would stop that outflow. That is a legitimate economic consideration, he says, even if it does not solve the deeper problems. The curriculum issue is perhaps the most damning detail Kalfelis raises. The proposed private law schools initially submitted study programs so thin that students would have graduated without learning how arrest warrants are issued, how criminal prosecution is initiated, or what jurisdictional competence even means. The accreditation authority rejected those programs, which Kalfelis calls a small comfort. His conclusion is that private universities are acceptable only under strict conditions, and that the state cannot use their existence as an excuse to keep starving public universities of funding. #Greece #Education #PrivateUniversities