A Prime Minister Who Exists To Cater To Private Interests

The Prime Minister defends the “executive state” he is supposed to have molded, but in reality it is a policy that despises all things public and, in essence, ends up furthering the goals of certain private interests.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis made this crystal clear on Thursday 30 April, when he chose to attend the inauguration of the private university founded by the (also private) University of Nicosia and CVC, an investment fund. We should note here that the Prime Minister’s attendance at events and ceremonies at Greek public universities have been sparse at best down the years, so it is interesting that his only relatively recent appearance at a university should have been for the inauguration of a private institution.

A private university which, contrary to the government’s claims, enjoys neither a particularly good reputation nor a position high up the international rankings, and an institution whose inauguration was the first to be announced, with many arguing from the very start that the legislation circumventing the explicit prohibition on private universities in Article 16 of the Constitution was tailored to the needs of this specific “investment”.

An “investment” that is not being made with a view to upgrading the quality of higher education in Greece, not even as a collaboration between, for instance, private concerns and the nation’s public research infrastructure. That simply came about because there is a market for studies in high-demand subjects, and thus a clientele that would rather pay tuition fees than go abroad. An investment made, if we may cut to the chase, because there was money to be made.

Which is market logic

Except that higher education isn’t simply another economic activity. It relates to prestige, quality, research, excellence. And if certain subjects were in high demand in Greece, it was precisely because the public universities that taught them were well-regarded. Put simply, it was obvious that Greek universities were turning out top-class doctors and engineers. That is why places in the faculties in question were so sought-after.

It’s just that this demand is not going to be met by institutions providing prestigious degrees. No, the private institutions the government has ushered in are actually nothing more or less than ‘degree mills’—purveyors of ‘pay-to-play’ qualifications. Anyone who studies there—and pays the exorbitant tuition fees for the privilege—will receive a degree (because they will have paid good money for it). Of course, this does not mean it will be of a correspondingly high standard.

In addition, the pre-existing partnerships with actual prestigious foreign universities are not with private institutions, but rather with Greek public universities—the ones the government is trying to undermine, in other words—, for the simple reason that prestigious foreign universities can only find the academic rigor they demand in state universities.

But that’s just small print for the current administration. The key for them is opening up the market for degrees and, of course, to make that new market highly profitable for those who invest in it.

Because we are dealing with a government committed to facilitating investors, not investment. It is no coincidence that the same fund that is participating in the private university the Prime Minister is advertising free of charge, CVC, is also the main private shareholder in the Greek PPC—and that is stands to be the main beneficiary of the recently announced share capital increase, which will essentially be subsidized by the state. Needless to say, the provisions regulating the operation of private universities also seek to facilitate profitability for investment institutions of this ilk.

Because it is clear that the issue for the government is not simply to open up the academic map of Greece, nor to bring about successful collaborations with foreign institutions, nor even to upgrade our universities through partnerships between universities and businesses. No, from the very start, the crux of the matter for the government was to forge an arena for profit-making (and, effectively, speculation) without sparing a thought for the consequences this would have on the overall situation and quality of higher education in our country.

Fast-track licensing for private universities – obstacles and delays for public universities

While these private universities benefit from expedited procedures and swift application reviews, public universities face a protracted struggle when seeking to create new departments or degree programs, as they must provide exhaustive proof of their long-term viability. Needless to say, in the case of the former, any notion of spatial planning, educational planning, and the prioritization of needs has also been thrown out the window.

Greek public universities have been refused permission to establish new departments on several occasions, on the grounds that the subjects in question are already over-provided for. Yet today, we see the exact same subjects (Medicine, Law, etc.) being offered by private universities without a thought for whether they can actually provide what is needed for a high-quality university education. Suffice it to say that a medical school needs a university hospital, because that is where the bulk of the clinical training will take place—and yet it is debatable at best that the private clinics associated with these private universities can play that role.

Article 16 will be revised, but when the time came to cater to the “investors”, it was as if it didn’t even exist

Indeed, the Prime Minister announced the need for an amendment to Article 16 of the Constitution in the speech he delivered at the inauguration of the sort of private university specifically it prohibits—an indirect admission that such a radical turn-about must face a clear constitutional barrier. But ultimately, such a move, which would have allowed the public and parliamentary debate that is an essential prerequisite for such a major upheaval to take place, would have required a consensus that simply was not there. Of course, what the Prime Minister did not say was that, when the time came to cater to CVC and the other private investors, he didn’t concern himself with the Constitution one jot, decreeing that the passing of new legislation was enough.

In his speech, the Prime Minister also mentioned that the goal was to attract students from a wider range of countries. Indeed, he even included Greek public universities offering courses in languages other than Greek. Of course, what he did not say is that, while private universities can address the international market, too, while catering to a primarily domestic clientele, public universities are obliged to accept only foreign students onto their non-Greek-language programs in another move designed to indirectly benefit private institutions.

What’s more, the same Prime Minister happy to pile on the praise for a private institution, rarely mentions let alone celebrates the achievements of Greece’s public universities (which he very rarely visits), despite their impressive rise in the international rankings, the research they produce, and the graduates who excel despite the institutional and financial stumbling blocks the government is constantly placing in their way. Perhaps because no private institution can be compared to public universities that have educated successive generations of the country’s intellectual and cultural leadership and made a pivotal contribution to the nation’s economic and social progress—including the struggle to reestablish democracy in the nation.

No, for the Prime Minister, the entire history of Greece’s public universities can be boiled down to their ‘lagging behind’. It is no coincidence that, once again, he spoke disparagingly of the 1980s, overlooking the fact that this is when the greatest democratization and modernization of Greece’s public universities took place, creating the foundations for their significant development and substantial internationalization since.

Because the Prime Minister’s vision is not to upgrade higher education even further; it is not to boost the amount of research taking place here; it is not even to allow more young people to benefit from a university education. His vision is to make certain “investors” happy. Even if it means doing irreparable damage to institutions that for decades now have been the real thinktanks of the country and the laboratories where its future is wrought.