Ongoing efforts by the Education Ministry to sort out the mess of the country’s universities and technical colleges are more than welcome and should not be curbed by reactions coming from leftist parties and certain members of the academic community.

The truth is that the political system in Greece had grown used to wasting taxpayers’ money by establishing technical colleges – better known here as TEI – and all sorts of university departments in order to pander to local interests in exchange for political support.

This is how we have ended up with so many dead technical colleges and universities that meet no real social needs dotting the country.

Any criticism directed against the education minister should not concern his campaign to enforce the much-needed reform, but rather at his failure to take the reform even further and make even deeper changes.