TEI

Following a contentious push by ruling SYRIZA to merge several technical colleges (TEIs) with universities to upgrade their status, Education Minister Costas Gavroglou proposed Friday that old TEI graduates should be allowed to sit exams to upgrade their existing degrees and equate them with those of universities.

The new education bill which was passed into law on Tuesday to merge Greek technical colleges (TEI) with universities will, critics says, undermine standards and plunge the country's higher education system into disarray.
Tellingly, more than 400,000 TEI graduates are demanding that their degrees be upgraded to university degrees.

Controversial legislation that is ostensibly aimed at modernizing the higher education system but which has been widely criticized for reverting to outdated teaching models and opening the back door to hirings was approved in Parliament on Tuesday following a tense debate in the House.

There can be no doubt that Mr. Kostas Gavroglu will be remembered as one of the worst education ministers ever.

With obsessions and ideological fixations he is attempting - with the entire educational community against him - to institute supposed reform by demolishing all that had been accomplished with basic consensus over the last years.

What are the implications when a technical college, or TEI, is absorbed administratively by a university? What changes, apart from the school's name?

Education Minister Kostas Gavroglu will go down in history as the minister who literally demolished tertiary education in Greece.

With no plan, programme, studies, evaluation or consensus, he is proceeding to merge tertiary technical schools (TEI) with universities for purely petty partisan reasons.

Crete's technical college (TEI) on Tuesday came a step closer to becoming the country's 22nd university after the University of Crete and the Technical University of Crete refused to merge with it and an expert committee deemed that the TEI's performance justified its elevation to university level.

Lawmakers on Wednesday will be debating a controversial Education Ministry bill for the creation of the so-called University of Western Attica.

Efforts to introduce a proper evaluation system for educators into Greece's education system and to reduce the excess number of tertiary institutions through mergers are two red flags for enemies of reform.