Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou last week called for the 33 operating licenses granted to private colleges under the previous conservative government to be revoked, even as the European Commission threatens to impose huge fines on Greece for failing to grant the same professional rights to graduates of such colleges as their counterparts at state universities.
Diamantopoulou revoked the 33 licenses, after the State Legal Council questioned the legality of the process by which the licenses had been granted by her predecessor Aris Spiliotopoulos.
Diamantopoulou, who has called for the colleges’ applications for operating licenses to be reviewed, is due for talks with EC officials aimed at averting more than 600,000 euros in fines and at securing the Greek government the right to monitor the quality of teaching.
These claims are unlikely to go down well in Brussels, which demands that EU-member states grant equal rights to graduates of foreign colleges, basically branches of foreign universities operating as franchises.
The move by the ministry fuelled anger in the private college sector. “The minister should find those who failed to follow legal procedures. We are entirely within the law” the chairman of the Hellenic Colleges’ Association, Constantinos Karkanias, told Kathimerini. He said his association and its members were planning legal action against the ministry.