APOSTOLOS LAKASAS

The Education Ministry is planning to introduce a new system for recognizing degrees acquired in other countries.

Seeking to upgrade the country’s system of higher education, widen its scope, entrench hitherto elusive meritocracy and to activate a brain grain, the Education Ministry is on course to introduce legislation with radical changes affecting the curriculum, selection of academics and administration.

The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and Columbia University officially signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to offer a dual degree to their students.

An increasing number of university graduates have turned in recent years, amid the financial crisis and high unemployment, to studies offered by vocational training institutes (IEK), which had hitherto been relatively shunned. 

Decades after universities all over the world set out to link their academic and research programs to private enterprise and innovation, Greece is trying to follow suit by subsidizing PhD theses on topics of interest to local enterprises.

A tactic by unionists aimed at undermining an Education Ministry initiative to introduce performance evaluations at the country’s schools appears not to have met with the anticipated response. 

Most foreign students interested in taking a course at a Greek university come from the United States and India, a survey of data from September 2017 to last week by the Study in Greece digital platform has found.

Greek universities will have to mind their international evaluation rankings to maximize the government aid they receive, starting next year.

A small group of students who say they belong to the extra-parliamentary Left decided to acquire a recreation area on the grounds of Athens University by expropriating a hall which was originally built as an events space.

The universities of Athens and Yale have signed a memorandum of understanding in an initiative spearheaded by two Greeks, UoA professor of analytical chemistry Nikolaos Thomaidis and epidemiology professor Vasilis Vasiliou from the American university.

The tug of war between the conservative government and schoolteachers’ unions intensified yesterday as the Education Ministry issued a circular mandating remote learning in cases where in-person classes have been upended by sit-in protests.