Following the loss of 37 per cent of its administrative staff, the University of Athens now has over 78 students per non-teaching staff member, far above the 12.5 students per non-teaching staff member at British universities.
The overnight removal of almost two in five administrative personnel from the University of Athens will drastically increase the ratio of non-teaching staff to students which is already far above UK averages, research from the university has shown.
As part of the government’s so-called mobility scheme, which will see 12,500 civil servants suspended from their positions on 75% of their already-reduced salary, 498 administrative staff lost their positions in the university, bringing the total number of non-teaching staff down from 1,337 to 839, a 37.2% reduction.
After an emergency meeting on Monday, the university’s senate announced it was “objectively impossible” to maintain its educational, research and administrative operations because of the lay-offs, which were mandated by the troika. The institution, which had been on strike for a fortnight, said it was left with no choice but to suspend operations indefinitely.
An indication of the difficulties the university could face in coping with student numbers emerges from a comparison of the ratios of staff to students in the UK and Greece.
According to figures from Britain’s Higher Education Statistics Agency, in 2011–12 there were on average 13.76 students per faculty member in the UK and 12.68 students for each non-teaching member of staff.
Figures for the University of Athens show that those ratios are much higher.
For example, in Athens there are 33.27 students per member staff member, a number that is 2.41 times the UK figure. As no faculty members are being placed on the mobility scheme, that figure will remain the same.
When it comes to the ratio of students to administrative staff, the picture is much worse. Before the removal of staff under the mobility scheme, there were 49.12 students for each member of the non-teaching staff, a figure that is 287% higher than the equivalent UK figure.
After the effectual sacking of almost 500 administrative staff from the university, that ratio has now increased to 78.29 students per non-teaching staff member, which works out at 6.1 times the UK average.
The education ministry has said that a total of 1,655 administrative staff will suspended from the universities around the country.
Following the example of the University of Athens, seven more universities have since announced a suspension of all activity, including the Athens University of Economic and Business, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Ioannina.
Source: enet
