SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras said that voting for the draft bill on public universities is "the ultimate ideological battle," speaking during the bill's debate in parliament on Thursday.
The two opposing sides in this battle, he noted, are on the one hand "the government's alliance with the profiteers of the educational sector, who slander public universities," and on the other hand are "not only the Left and the opposition, but the entire university community."
The great majority of people "do not belong to your class, and do not have the financial means to study in universities abroad," Tsipras noted, and called on Education Minister Niki Kerameos to "realize that she is the minister of education "for all Greek children and not a minister of the college from which he graduated."
Some 40,000 young students were left out of public universities this year after the government raised the university entry grades minimum, noted the main opposition party leader. On top of that, he noted, "police was allowed to enter universities instead of being dispatched where they are most needed, in residential neighborhoods," while "extortionate post-graduate course fees were introduced, essentially abolishing free education."
The government's "neoliberal vision to build a university that will look more like a joint-stock company is obsolete", he noted, as it only produces "fragmented degrees, partial training, and workers without professional rights and without requirements and demands.”