Against the destruction of public Higher Education in Greece

In Greece the present coalition government of the two conservative parties, New Democracy and PASOK, is implementing austerity measures and following the neoliberal economic dictates of Troika, under the auspices of the EU and the IMF, with the official excuse that these are policies meant to correct the ills and troubles that the country’s ever-growing debt spawns.

However, fiscal discipline for the government translates solely and narrowly into a full-scale attack on the public sector in its entirety and a thorough dismantling of whatever little their predecessors might have left intact of the welfare state.

Public higher education constitutes no exception to this rule and is carefully and consistently targeted by the government. The ultimate goal is that higher education is soon offered up to private hands.

On a daily basis, university students, professors, teaching and research assistants, members of the administrative staff are confronted with the serious consequences of the deliberate failure of the state to approve the election and appointment of new faculty members, the refusal of the state to hire employees in particularly understaffed university offices, and unjustified government decrees which prescribe funding cuts for all types of academic activities.

The government’s recent decision to include large numbers, rising up to 40 % , of the members of the administrative staff in the eight largest universities of the country in a scheme euphemistically entitled “civil servant mobility program” is in essence a decisive moment of this escalating attack. The program which the government plans to put into immediate effect threatens to lead staff members to unemployment and further carries serious repercussions for these institutions on all levels. As soon as this program is realized, students, researchers, scholars, and faculty members will find it difficult and in many occasions entirely impossible to conduct any type of academic activity, ranging from painstaking lab and clinic work to a brief visit to the library.

We therefore ask you to sign this petition against the destruction of public higher education in Greece.