Will branch campuses make Greek higher education flower?

European higher education arguably began in ancient Greece, when an enterprising young philosopher called Plato established his fabled Academy in Athens in the 4th century BC – followed a few decades later by Aristotle’s Lyceum. In modern times, however, the country has not looked kindly upon private institutes.

Article 16 of the country’s constitution states that “the establishment of university-level institutions by private persons is prohibited”. Moreover, “art and science, research and teaching shall be free”. Notwithstanding that, a law allowing overseas universities to establish branch campuses in Greece squeaked through the country’s 300-seat parliament earlier this year, passing by 159 votes to 129 – but only after weeks of demonstrations that included scores of university occupations by students. And the country’s Communist Party (KKE) leader, Dimitris Koutsoubas, was not alone in claiming that the legislation was part of a plan by Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ centre-right government to commercialise higher education that would ultimately lead to the introduction of undergraduate tuition fees even for Greece’s 25 public universities.

Others worry that the establishment of private universities will lead to the defunding and decline of public universities as wealthier students migrate to the private sector. Either way, the fear is summarised by Harris Mamoulakis of the opposition party Syriza: “Whoever has money will study: the power of privilege.”

As the vote was held in March, thousands of students gathered outside parliament and on campuses across the country, displaying banners proclaiming “Their profits or our education” and “No to private universities”. And hours before the midnight vote, protesters clashed with police as some 18,000 people demonstrated in central Athens against the proposed legislation.

The new law, called “Strengthening the Public University: Framework for the operation of non-profit branches of foreign universities and other provisions”, stipulates that branch campuses must be run on a non-profit basis. Nevertheless, the permission it gives them to charge fees and issue degrees of equal standing to those awarded by public universities is seen by critics not only as contrary to Greece’s long history of free higher education but also as contrary to the constitution. Opposition MPs from five parties formally challenged the constitutionality of the bill when it was first presented, while experts predict future challenges on this basis.

Nevertheless, speaking to Times Higher Education earlier this year, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Greece’s education minister, said the law was “fully commensurate with the constitution” and would enable the “opening up of the Greek university system”, helping to “render the country an educational centre”.

The majority of Greeks reportedly support the creation of privately run universities, and the Mitsotakis government, early in its second term, retains a healthy lead in opinion polls.

“I think it’s important for governments and politicians to show that if certain totemic policies which have remained in our country for decades are considered to be non-productive, we should have the courage to break them or change them,” Pierrakakis said.

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Sector leaders have long highlighted pervasive issues across Greek higher education, describing a landscape of underfunding, excessive bureaucracy and institutional stasis. While “Greek public universities have quality students and faculty”, says David Horner, president of the American College of Greece, “the weaknesses of the current system are numerous. There’s a lack of student choice, a lack of institutional autonomy and an unresponsiveness to private-sector employment needs.” Students often take an “excessive” amount of time to complete degrees, Horner adds; indeed, the latest report from the Hellenic Authority for Higher Education found that only a fifth finished their degree within the minimum period of four years.

Quality is also an issue. No Greek universities placed within the top 500 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024, with the highest ranked institutions – the University of Crete and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – sitting in the 501-600 range. While research quality was typically strong across the country’s institutions, they usually received lower scores for their teaching quality (reputation, institutional income and ratios of student-staff, doctorate-bachelor and doctorate-staff), research environment (reputation, income, productivity) and international outlook (students, staff, co-authorship).

Greece exceeds the European Union average for higher education uptake, with more than 45 per cent of those aged 25 to 34 holding a tertiary education degree in 2022; the EU average was 42 per cent, according to the European Commission. But many graduates struggle to translate their qualifications into jobs: the employment rate of 20- to 34-year-old graduates was just 70.1 per cent in 2022, compared with an EU average of 86.7 per cent.

Perhaps the most striking statistic concerning Greek higher education is the rate at which its population elects to study overseas. In 2021, according to Unesco, 40,595 Greeks were doing so, a figure that exceeds the UK total of 39,651 despite the UK’s population being six times larger. “For the disciplines many Greeks want to study, like medicine, law, psychology and pharmacy, there are not enough positions in Greek public universities,” says Dionissios Mantzavinos, vice-rector for academic and international affairs at the University of Patras.

That can lead to fierce competition for entry. While higher education is free, students must complete the rigorous Panhellenic Examination to gain a place at a public university, prompting many families to pay for expensive private tutoring. The system “puts psychological and financial pressure on students and families”, Horner says.

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At the same time, overcapacity is a looming issue. Theodoros Papaioannou, executive director of the government-funded internationalisation agency Study in Greece, tells THE that the country has a “demographic problem”, with a falling birth rate and an ageing population, making it imperative for Greek universities to recruit more international students.

In 2021, 23,792 students came from overseas to attend Greek institutions, according to Unesco, but Papaioannou’s sights are set much higher.

“We think that internationalisation can become a pillar of income for Greek universities,” he says. Not only would this shore up Greek institutions, it would also boost Greek prominence on the global stage, he says, adding: “From the perspective of international affairs and relations, it’s also important to create ties and connections with universities from around the globe.”

However, he acknowledges that his agency’s mission is a challenging one: “Internationalisation is something relatively new for Greek higher education, and it’s very difficult to change the culture and the mindset.” Particularly foreign to Greek institutions is the “entrepreneurship part of international education”, he says. “Greek universities are not that used to [being] marketing-oriented, or rebranding and storytelling…That’s what we’re trying to do – instil a new culture into Greek higher education.”

Pointing to recent legislation facilitating the creation of English-language international degree programmes, Papaioannou says “significant progress” has been made over the past few years. “This is reflected in the number of international programmes being developed – the number has increased. The number of students enrolled in international study programmes has increased. All this is an outcome of political will.”

Education minister Pierrakakis was keen to stress to THE that the new legislation goes beyond branch campuses, also allowing for joint master’s programmes to be established between Greek public universities and international institutions, while smoothing the path for international students to undertake short study periods in Greece.

According to Papaioannou, the law is another “decisive step towards internationalisation of the Greek higher education environment”. Greece, he believes, is “about to change”.

“We’re witnessing a cultural shift,” he says. But there is work to do: “Greek universities are trying to craft an internationalisation strategy, but they lack [suitable] administrative staff because their staff have an older mindset, and they lack funding.”

Some in Greece also hope that the establishment of private universities, whether international or domestic, could result in greater institutional autonomy across a sector that is known for being tightly controlled by the state. Patras’ Mantzavinos is among them. At present, he says, “public universities are very closely related to the Ministry of Education. In theory, we have independent budgets, but they’re under very strict regulation by the government. This doesn’t help things to happen.

“Private businesses cannot operate under this framework, so this will have to change – and public universities will follow,” he predicts. “The framework under which both private and public universities operate has to be quite similar. Ideally, it should be identical.”

One fear, however, is that branch campuses will cluster in popular big-city study locations such as Athens and Thessaloniki, boosting capacity there to the detriment of other regions. “Greek universities located in cities that are not that popular might face an existential threat,” Papaioannou says.

Still, he believes, “healthy competition” is possible with public universities. “Private institutions will be more organised, and they might have the know-how in terms of student recruitment, marketing and promotion,” he says. “Greek public universities, alone and supported by the state, should capitalise on this new global, cosmopolitan environment in higher education to attract students to their campuses.”

Ianis Matsoukas, executive director of Metropolitan College’s Global University Hub, similarly anticipates that “the presence of foreign universities will have a positive impact on the progress of higher education in Greece”, whether through “competition or collaboration”.

On the other hand, Mantzavinos believes that public universities need not fear private start-ups because they might not reach the standards of existing institutions, at least initially. “All these new private universities may be of lower quality than the public universities – that’s why public universities should not worry about competition,” he says.

The new legislation does include several stipulations regarding quality. Like public universities, private institutions will be assessed on academic performance by the Hellenic Authority for Higher Education, while campus facilities will be monitored by the National Organisation for the Certification of Qualifications and Vocational Guidance. The law also incorporates measures on financial viability and student support.

As Matsoukas notes, however, branch campuses might still have an image problem to overcome. Given the intense competition for places at public universities and the rigour of the entrance examinations, they might be perceived as a second choice for those who fail to make the grade, he says. And international branch campuses’ typical focus on teaching over research is a further obstacle to the perception of quality, he thinks.

Another question is how many branch campuses will be established in the first place, particularly given declining institutional enthusiasm for potentially risky overseas ventures in recent years. As Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education, puts it: “You can easily fail in the branch campus business”, whether for reasons of changing financial circumstances, geopolitical tensions or just a failure to recruit enough students. 

In 2021, for instance, the National University of Singapore decided to end its collaboration with Yale University on the Singapore-based liberal arts institution Yale-NUS College, a move that reportedly surprised Yale-NUS president Tan Tai Yong and the Yale administration. Earlier this year, meanwhile, Texas A&M University announced the closure of its Qatar branch campus because of “heightened instability” in the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Nor are these isolated examples. History is littered with branch campuses that struggled to establish a niche. They include Aberystwyth University’s Mauritius campus, whose closure was announced in 2017, just two years after it opened, having enrolled only 106 of a targeted 2,000 students. According to data from the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) and the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT), hosted at Pennsylvania State University and the State University of New York at Albany, the number of operating international branch campuses around the world stood at 333 in March 2023, while the number that had opened and then closed was 58.

One potential check on demand is that Greek students in pursuit of an international education need not rely on branch campuses, Altbach notes: “Greece is in the EU, so they have access to Erasmus; students could go anywhere around the continent and get an overseas education very easily” without having to pay international fees.

Moreover, while institutions typically open international branches to secure financial and brand-building benefits, “Greece is not a very large country – I can’t imagine it’s going to be a huge market for anybody,” Altbach says. Hence, the Greek government is “going to have to pony up a good chunk of money to get name brands to go there”, he predicts.

Subsidies by host governments are fairly common in countries that want to attract branch campuses. New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi, for instance, was built by the emirate’s government, while Qatar’s government fully finances all operations on its Education City site, which hosts half a dozen US universities, including Texas A&M. And while India, which also recently opened up to branch campuses, is not offering direct subsidies, its Gift City development in Gujarat – where Australia’s Wollongong and Deakin universities have already set up branches – offers tax exemptions and permits the repatriation of profits.

Indeed, it may also be that the opening of India, the world’s largest higher education market, limits Western universities’ bandwidth to consider other, smaller destinations. Coventry University, for instance, became the first overseas university to found a branch campus in Poland in 2019, but it is in the running to be the first UK institution to establish a branch campus in India; other UK institutions are also said to be interested in India.

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To counter Greece’s relatively small size, Matsoukas suggested in a recent article for THE that branch campuses there “may seek to attract not only talented Greek students but also recruit from regions such as the Middle East and Asia, enhancing [the branches’] global presence and financial stability”.

However, a more likely development than a rush of branch campuses to Greece, Patras’ Mantzavinos foresees, is that existing Greek institutions with international links seek university title. “Some colleges already operating in Greece and awarding university degrees in collaboration mainly with British universities will now become private universities,” he says. “I would love to see some good quality British and US universities setting up their branches in Greece, but this is the least likely scenario to happen.”

The US and the UK already have a presence in Greek higher education: Columbia, Harvard and Princeton universities all operate “global centres” in the country, while Oxford Brookes, Queen Margaret and the University of East London are among those offering UK-accredited degrees in partnership with Greece’s Metropolitan College.

As it happens, however, the first official overseas branch campus is likely to be French. Université Sorbonne Paris Nord has confirmed that it is developing plans to open what is likely to be known as “The French University of Greece – International Campus Université Sorbonne Paris Nord” – an upgrading of an Athens private college with which the Paris institution already has a degree-awarding partnership, the Institut d’Études Francophones (IdEF). College director Stylianos Amargianakis told THE in July that, in practice, “not much will change except for the legal framework governing our operations in Greece”.

Other overseas universities might elect to “explore Greek higher education through synergies with Greek state universities, and then they could invest in establishing a branch here”, Study in Greece’s Papaioannou suggests. “I don’t think that they will do it next year, though – I think that it’s a long-term project.”

Quicker off the blocks are likely to be Cypriot universities, several sector leaders agree. According to Mantzavinos, the University of Nicosia (in the 501-600 bracket in the THE World University Rankings) and the European University Cyprus are already in the running. Nicosia declined to comment on its interest, while the European University did not respond to THE’s enquiries, but Cypriot universities, Papaioannou says, “won’t have any problem” recruiting students in Greece. “With Cyprus, we have a special connection and relationship. They speak Greek and there’s cultural proximity,” he says. “It’s easier for [Cypriot universities] to function here: they know the system, the mechanisms, the culture, the mindset.”

Perhaps most significantly, he adds, Cypriot institutions “also attract a large number of Greek students every year, and they do not want to lose them [to competition from overseas branch campuses], which is why they’ll probably create something in Greece”.

However, the constitutional issue may still loom large even in Cypriot universities’ planning, given the likelihood of legal challenges as licences to operate branch campuses are issued. Despite the government’s assurances, critics struggle to see how the establishment of fee-charging private institutions can be squared with the stipulation that “art and science, research and teaching shall be free”, and wrangling over that question could proceed all the way to Greece’s supreme administrative court or even to the European Court of Justice, Matsoukas predicts.

That said, the constitutional question could ultimately go away: many sector leaders believe this year’s law is the government’s way of testing the political water before attempting to amend the constitution to explicitly allow private individuals and organisations of all kinds to directly establish fee-charging universities in Greece.

“I think this is a preparatory step,” Matsoukas says. “I expect Article 16 to change in the future.”

Still, Patras’ Mantzavinos thinks that many overseas universities may wait to see the new realities on the ground before committing. “It’s about how the legal framework will adapt to the new conditions,” he says. “If things become more flexible, more universities will be attracted to open their branches in Greece.”

The American College of Greece’s Horner agrees that many things remain up in the air. But he is optimistic. If the branch campus law is “implemented in a way that reflects its spirit and intent, and if it withstands the inevitable legal challenges”, he says, “it could very likely lead to reforms in both public and private higher education policy and practice that will greatly benefit Greece in the short and longer run”.