4th WIETE Annual Conference on Engineering and Technology Education Cairns, Australia, 11-15 February 2013

2013 WIETE

Greek HEIs: a Strategic Road to Exit Crisis

George Sp. Kakarelidis & Georgios Kabouridis
Technological Educational Institute of Patras Patras, Greece

ABSTRACT: Apart from the international crisis that led to ever shrinking HEI's funding, Greek HEIs are prone to three big disadvantages: 1st they absorb most students than upper secondary education releases or they can cope with regardless of grades achieved, 2d not being really autonomous but subject to fuzzy and complicated laws making the development of the Institutions and the cooperation with private sector problematic and 3d they operate without any plans of their students employability. Thus Greek HEIs have reached to a dead end. Since Greek economy and state admin structures are in dire straits in the middle of the crisis in conjunction with extremely low demand and productivity, with almost zero investments, the necessity of transforming Greek HEIs into a powerful vehicle performing beyond its traditional scope is a must. This paper examines the current situation and provides a modest proposal that aspires to address emerged crisis issues in order to engage HEI transformation into a leading driving force for Greek economy.

INTRODUCTION Global Economic Crisis effects due to housing market collapse in USA were not so severe in Greece. Neither the private sector debts were as large nor the public ones. In fact the real Deficit of Greece in 2009 was not 15.6% but around 3.9% of GDP provided we apply in EuroStat s data (April, 14, 2012) the same cross country definitions and calculations for Stock-flow adjustments addend (SFA) using the formula: dt d(t 1) = Dt + Kt (1) where ds are debts at sequential times, D is deficit and K the SFA factor the definition of which is of course the main cause of large observed differences in calculating the Deficit thus resulting in various measurements and lead to different political decisions. Even the size of the public sector did not exceed the EU average although the territorial characteristics of the mainland and especially of its archipelago require a lot of public agencies to be present including at least teachers, doctors, coast guards, internal and external security and military units. The real problems of Greece are in direct correspondence with a) endogenous problem in States structure and b) with a continuing imports exports trade deficit. The chosen courses of action by the governments were to perform severe cuts in all public expenses including HEIs funding that are not enough for maintaining almost 40 HEIs (Universities and Technological Institutes) with about 450 degree granting departments and 85000 entrant students per year out of 100000 upper secondary school leavers each year. Greek HEIs served the nation, the students and their field of study and research since 1837 AD, a few only years after Greek Nation Independence. It must be reminded that Greek HEIs are all public bodies and they are funded in a coded line-by-line budget categories and not via a lump sum money transfer. Peculiar governing laws in their administration, even in internal processes makes things worsen. Kakarelidis & Kabouridis have proposed appropriate governing and leadership models of Greek HEIs under crisis [5]. But Greek HEIs face far more problems: Limited Autonomy in academic affairs, in personnel hiring, in administration, in Budget and Finance and no control at all of the number of students to be registered each year. For about 140 years Higher Education in Greece was growing progressively enjoying rational increases in number of HEIs, Departments, stuff and students, in parallel with national growth. At the seventies the percentage of school graduates entering the HEIs ranged between 15-20%, while in Europe and USA the numbers were much smaller. Admissions were possible only via an annual state examination system, which was and still is fair, impartial and a bit difficult to pass through and conitnues to be the normal way of entering a HEI nowadays. 1

At that time demographics reached their peak and stabilized around a 100,000 school leavers per year as can be found in Eurostat 2012 data releases [6]. Since 80s the percentage of students increased steadily regardless of their entrance exam results therefore distributing more students to HEIs. The universitization of Technological Institutes in 90s and the erase of any failure line in the entry exams grades accompanied by the EU funded but oddly planned in Greece and executed, expansion of the Tertiary Education EU-wide, rocketed the students registered to a HEI to 100% of the school leavers. And now is about 85% mostly because the missing part is really those students that did not finally choose to attend specific courses. Due to the high standards of academic staff and the high requirements for passing a lesson / course and/or obtaining a degree in Greek HEIs, a significant number of students fail in their exams. Since there was not a legal way to delete their student's status, a large pool of repeatedly exams failing students was formed. Instead of forcing them out of the system thus having a great number of drop outs, the State interfered again by allowing the students to be examined practically infinitely thus transforming the drop outs into an enormously delayed 'graduates to be' pool. Statistically the average time for a student to obtain a 4-years degree, increased from a normal 5 years to 7+ years. Only recently a law gave the universities the ability to unregister a student if his studies are prolonged by more than 2 years. As it is normally expected the percentage of delayed degree obtainment increased again. This also shows that the high standards of the Greek HEIs are fortunately prevailed and the Global Academic Community and HEIs continue to recognize the value of Greek degrees and continue to accept Greek degree holders for postgraduate studies, research, academic staffing, professional career, work etc. An interesting point is that departments that have much less than the allocated by the government number of entrant students (and some are closed down) are the ones that are related most with the primary and secondary sectors of the Economy. And the allotted numbers of students to HEIs is not derived by a planned way but around a simple division of total school leavers by total number of departments. All HEIs are still subject to a burden of fuzzy and complicated aging laws that restricted execution of their own administration, governance and to some extent the academic process. They are also unable to establish by their own decision research centres, spin offs, postgraduate studies or cooperation and joint structures with other public or private bodies. They enjoy only an extremely limited ability of administering freely their budget, which leads to a very dependence on state aka political decisions. An immediate implication is that only a tiny number of established cooperation with other stakeholders exists. And this does not usually include Industry or private sector. It is surprisingly paradox that most of the papers about the reform of Greek HEIs are concerned about a) accountability and b) the electoral system of the rectors and other bodies. An analogous to this is when a troubled Industrial Company in order to be saved a) seeks for new forms of reports for satisfying the General Shareholders Assembly when there are zero share dividends, losses instead of profits, troubled customer base, poorly designed and uncontrolled production and b) seeks new ways of voting for appointing members of the Executive Board, when neither their predecessors nor the ones to be elected have the authority to really govern and steer the company, change products and production, create strategic alliances, reengineer, redesign, remarket or brand market, hire or fire and do whatever it takes to do in order to get the ship out of troubles and dire straits. We decided to leave these out of our proposal because accountability, instead of redesigning and developing a streamlined production checks and inspects ratios and statistics. But as anyone critically learned the old basic statistics rules, the data collection and analysis is not so important itself. The production of Data to be collected is the most important and valuable process. Unfortunately this is not the case with current Greek HEIs system. The electoral system procedures for rectors, chancellors, vice rectors etc, that everyone speaks about are totally unimportant. Although In Greece political parties influenced the elections regardless of the official participation of students or not, at the end of the day the elections or the elected persons had nothing to do with the success of them as rectors and governing bodies. Simply put the laws around HEIs did not allow them to work as a real executive board. So it is oxymoron seeing the government and authors pushing universities to semi market orientation via accountability while not granting them full autonomy to do exactly this. Concluding the description of the current situation, tertiary education including the so called community colleges or Institutes giving in a professional way professional capabilities to youth according to the needs of the Country and its economy are neither well planned, nor coordinated nor focusing in sectors of economy where there can be a competitive advantage. When the crisis emerged forcing the Ministry to make severe cuts, the budgets could not sustain any more such an uncontrolled and poorly designed expansion of tertiary education. THE EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT In EU Educational Systems were not considered for Globalization or at least Europeanization. However the mobility of professionals as a pillar of EU base axiom led European Councils to encourage students and staff mobility as well.

Careful steps led to meetings of education ministers (Bologna etc) where they discussed and agreed that each member state should adopt common practices. Nevertheless in general the Bologna process is not a directive or obligatory jurisdiction. It is rather a continuous Forum where many ministers of EHEA countries try to internally adopt the conclusions of the various meetings. Especially when most of the talks are not clearly education based but also combined with trends in work, labour, new professions and business opportunities etc. EMPLOYABILITY HEIs in Greece and Europe phase the same question: what are the prospective of jobs for their graduates and of course for trained vocational further education graduate workers? The answer is given by EUs Official Reference Centre for the Development of Vocational Education and Training (Cedefop) which predicts that in addition to the 20.3 million new jobs created between 2006 and 2020, another 85 million jobs (four times more) will be available to replace workers who retire or leave the labour market for other reasons. Some statistical data is presented in Figure 1 (The total number of job openings therefore will be 105.3 million in the EU-25+ between 2006 and 2020):

Figure 1: Total requirement by qualification level, projected change 2006-20, in millions, EU-25+. Source: CEDEFOP [3] This urges not only HEIs but also Vocational Educational Training Institutes (VETIs) to offer the necessary qualified personnel in time to meet the needs. Again in 2020, the total number of jobs in the EU-25 will be 223.6 million. Based on demographic developments, the Eurostat baseline scenario estimates that the working age population (15-64 years) for the EU-25 will decline from 308.6 million in 2006 to 302.5 million in 2020. Although the working age population will fall by around 6 million between 2006 and 2020 more than 20 million more new jobs will be created. Consequently, Europe may experience a major workforce shortage in the status quo policy scenario. These figures imply that Europe will need an employment rate of almost 74 % to satisfy labour market demand. The current Lisbon strategy target is 70 %. If Europe meets this target by 2020, there will be a shortage of almost 12 million people in the workforce, due to the different occupational structures and potential skill gaps. Greece on the other hand is expected to have a projected (Eurostat) change in occupational structure towards +9% of high skilled non-manual occupation, +5% skilled manual occupation and +10% elementary manual occupation and a 9% skilled non-manual one. These rates demand an immediate relevant restructure of Tertiary and Vocational Education. Greece imports huge percentages of base food supplies (livestock, milk, wheat, pulses, fruits) and industrial products that led to a current trade deficit of 20 billion Euros for 2011 (source: Hellenic Statistical Authority, Commercial Transactions of Greece, 11 June 2012). The ever-increasing percentage of urban habitats led to large uncultivated areas of Land.

On the other hand recent researches show that there are resources in Greek soil and seabed that are of great geopolitical importance and financially sound. These include Uranium, Gold, natural Gas, Oil etc that will add to the demand for skilled personnel and also the aid of scientists and researchers that excel in technological aspects of extracting, processing and exploiting such resources [2] THE MODEST STRATEGIC PROPOSAL ABOUT HEIs IN GREECE In designing the proposal the following layers were considered: a) Student Layer: the school leavers of the upper secondary education must have open access to scientific knowledge, accredited technical competencies, professional rights, vocational capabilities and finally to a suitable job (which is not only a must for living but also a sociological necessity) according to their own abilities at the time of leaving school and/or whenever they obtain required qualifications. b) Outcome Layer: Further and Tertiary Education (academic, professional or vocational) must be harmonized with the States necessities and more specifically with all economy sectors of the Country. c) Finance Layer: The effects of the proposal must address also crisis issues through their economic impact in savings and funding while addressing the needs of both students, HEIs and the countrys. c) European Layer: which includes the development of a European Higher Education Area as set by Bologna. The net result is that the tertiary education redesign proposed here is not a simple matter of reversing problematic issues but calls for a harmonization of the new Greek Tertiary Education (that consists of Universities, Technological Universities and Vocational Educational & Training Institutes-VETIs) with Economy, Society and Territorial Development: Universities As classically defined, they absorb up to the upper 20% in grades (a mixture of A, B in British system) and numbers of the upper secondary school leavers, having as outcome scientists, researchers, upper level candidates for Public Services, Agencies and Administration. Duration of 1st degree studies is 4 years and is equivalent to a British BSc (3 years) plus an obligatory additional year corresponding to a Diploma / Major Course (1 year). Therefore for an MSc degree, only 1 year is required and is strongly encouraged. Universities are both research and teaching based Institutes. Students are required to be extremely competent in theory comprehension. Actually as graduates they should possess higher level (4xx/5xx) attributes according to the revised Blooms by Krathwohl taxonomy [4]. Therefore the degree programs should offer graduate-level work appropriate to the field and course work significantly more rigorous in both depth of study and methodology. Combined / double degrees / courses and applied directional options are very limited and only permitted at the 4th year of study. New degree programs may rarely be created provided they satisfy that its subjects are new, they are enough to form a curriculum other than the existent ones, that there is underlying theory on its subjects not easily found and served in other programs, that the underlying theory is scientifically sound and open continuously to further research for the years ahead. Universities must operate at least three faculties of the following Disciplines offering degrees in Science, Classical Studies, Medicine, Law, and Social Sciences. Universities of Technology In todays world, it has become important to make technology productive in other words, to make money. Technology must make economic sense. Generally, science and engineering students come out of traditional universities with little understanding of the real world or, indeed, the world of work. They are skilled in the science, but are then faced with doing budgets, drafting strategic plans, writing reports, managing people, developing technology and applying skills. This is where universities of technology come into the frame. Clearly, a country needs both types of institutions, and each has its niche in its own spectrum of the countrys educational requirements. Universities of Technology (UoT) become centres of technology excellence, and do not duplicate what traditional universities are so good at, and are geared to do. The UoT absorb up to the upper 30% in grades (a mixture of A, B, C in British system) and up to the 30% of numbers of the upper secondary school leavers. With a duration of 3 year studies plus 1 year Work Integrated Learning (WIL) provide the nation with technicians competent and readiness to exercise their profession. Professional rights given to them are not exercised by the University graduates. Their degree is BEng, honour equivalent. It is at the discretion of a UoT to oblige for a 5-year course (as National Technical University of Athens) therefore granting Diploma Eng degree (BEng plus 1 year Diploma course before WIL). Greek Military Schools are considered UoTs. They have full authority of creating (and terminating) new degree programs according to technological and economical needs. It is obvious that a University of Technology will differ from a classical University. Brook [1] provides a useful set of characteristics of a University of Technology: Research-informed; Curriculum developed around the graduate profiles defined by industry and professions; Focus on strategic research, applied research into professional practice; Multi-level entry and exit points for students; Concerned primarily with the development of vocational/ professional education; and Technological capabilities as important as cognitive skills.

By being redesignated Universities of Technology, the former Technical Educational Institutes would be able to place themselves firmly in the minds of government, industry, parents and students as logical first choice institutions of higher education. This would once and for all settle the problem of identity, profile and recognition, which TEIs had experienced, with international, professional educational associations, organisations, agencies and students. Universities of Technology must operate at least three faculties of the following Disciplines offering degrees in Engineering, Electronic, IT, Applied Sciences, Arts. All Universities & UoTs are public bodies. Foreign Universities cannot open a branch (or operate or franchise) offering specific degree programs or departments, unless they open a subsidiary University with at least three Faculties as above that already operate in the foreign country. Provided they are not for profit entities in their homeland and their land of origin ministry of Education fully academically recognizes the degrees they offer. Foreign Military Schools are not allowed to have subsidiaries in Greece. All existing Universities, TEIs and Independent Departments must be adapted to the above considerations. The 22 Universities and 16 TEIs with around 450 degrees (programs/ Departments) will be merged to create at most 20 HEIs (Universities and UoTs) with at least one distributed in each of the 10 districts of Greece. Their ex-450 departments will be reduced and form faculties with 3 to 5 in each HEI providing less than 200 degrees with Universities granting about a third of the new ones. All the programs/ courses / departments that already exist and cannot normally merged to a university course because they do not normally consist an autonomous field of Science or they are not theory based but rather represent a specific technique, or part of a lesson or part of an applied, technological or professional skill (such as some that established mostly via European Programs of Expansion of Tertiary Education) are immediately transferred to Vocational Educational & Training Institutes. The International University at Thessaloniki is allowed to offer only postgraduate studies. Vocational Educational & Training Institutes (VETIs) Oriented mainly in Primary and Secondary Economy Sector, VETIs educate and train the remaining 50% of school leavers. They are established and operate in the very areas where the production is performed, with curriculums appropriate of course to the specific area' s interests. Duration of studies is up to 2 years. Their Certificate is a professional one. All young people wishing to start working should have at least a relevant VETI Certificate. A significant proportion of existing workforce lacking one, will be requested to attend short courses that will accompany their experience thus obtaining certified skills. All VETIs will be established, controlled, open, terminated and operate under UoTs. Main Advantages & Prerequisites The main advantages of such classification are: -Economies of Scale in resources & Optimal Resource allocation by more than halving the expenses required. -Streamlining the entry and graduation numbers and the degrees offered with the needs while maintaining the absolute necessary disciplines regardless of their immediate economic implication. Focusing in Outcomes. -Increased Employability and meeting the demands by 2020 and beyond, by carefully planning the programs and numbers of students. -The categories are based in the abilities of students and not on marketing preferences and dictations. -No sector of economy is left without knowledgeable workers to be. No territory is left without having a nearby institute that combines knowledge with the area' s specific production advantages. -There is a multiplication effect of the local Institute into the economic and social life of the area and not only infusing the money of students for rent and living alone. -No conflict of rights is observed. -There is a strict differentiation on academic and professional status and there is no exclusion from registration which is based only on abilities. Provision of automatically registering top performers from each level to nest is applied. -There is also a tight of generations with their homeland, real estate, property or other substances and already running productions that is revealed most with VIs. (e.g. a town at the mountains where they breed cows and sheep for meat may very well have a vocational school of cow breeding for their meat productions but they may consider a competitive advantage if they operate also a VETI on Milk products processing, thus expanding economy in a scientific proven way and making their offspring decide to stay and live there). Key Prerequisites for this redesign to be successful are: -Full Autonomy of the HEIs. Not only academically but also in their administration and Funds allocation. The new HEIs constitution will not have the same organizational and administrative characteristics that other Legal Public Bodies suffer from. The state funds are transferred as a lump sum for the full expenses and not by budget (line) code. HEIs are responsible for paying all expenses including staff. Pre-emptively checked expenses by state authorities are not applicable. HEIs are obliged to take into account for their expenses the ethics of good practice. Heirs governing and finance bodies are accounted for financial administration to the general Assembly held every two years. Failure to satisfy it results to the Bodies' members step down. All HEIs have the right to establish and operate N.F.P. organizations such as spin-offs, research centres, specialized laboratories, organizations for administering any industrial 5

property rights or patents that the University holds etc. They can also participate or cooperate with other Governmental authorities, Public, Semi Public, or Not-For-Profit organizations at national or International level. However they do not directly compete with the market and companies. Rather they urge for the development of companies in the newly researched areas and topics of science and technology moving out when the market is ready. -Professional rights. For any tertiary HEI the rights are granted by the corresponding Chambers or Scientific Bodies of the Greek State. The chambers and scientific Bodies are obliged to issue equivalencies of foreign professional rights. If additional examinations are requested for Greek degree holders, the same examinations are requested for foreign degree holders irrespectively of nationality and are given only in Greek. Exemptions are applied to Greek Tertiary level Armed Forces Schools which they only enjoy a limited autonomy and professional rights for entrance and career, as described by the common decisions of Ministries of Defence, External Affairs and Education. Finally the much-debated Accountability of HEIs including Evaluation of all outcomes is performed every 8 years. EXPECTED OUTCOMES OF THE MODEST PROPOSAL a) For the Country and the Economy: Immediate decentralization of school leavers retaining most of them at their homeland or greater district; Ensuring existence of Knowledgeable people in every economic sector and in every geographical area; Harmonization of Educational Levels; Decrease of imports in sectors; Increase of GDP; No wasted resources money or time; More attractive investment opportunities; Harmonization of production; Economies of scale and to some extent in scope. b) For All Education Levels and Employability: Leverage of Student potential; Robust and dense Studies; Increase of Resources to Students ratios; Immediate decrease of graduation delays; Elimination of prolonged studies; Provision for continuing education after graduation from one level to the other. Immediate employability. c) For Universities: Increase of Research potential; Contribution mainly to tertiary and upper sectors of the Economy d) For Universities of Technology: Up to Date technical education; Easier to establish new degree programs; contribution to almost all sectors e) For Vocational Institutes: Knowledgeable workforce in primary sector; Ability to cultivate and increase agricultural production, seafood, tourism support etc under the guidance of HEIs; Contribution to primary and in lesser extent to secondary sector. CONCLUSION In this paper Greek HE system was examined for its basic weaknesses that in the context of economic crisis era had led to a dead end. Redesigning or reengineering the system is a necessity that goes far beyond Quality Assurance, Accountability or changing just the leadership. The proposed reengineering addresses both structural deficiencies in Academia and Administrative system and contributes to economic growth. We propose three levels of further education that are distinct although one can fairly easily have access from one level to another provided he meets standard requirements. The Institutes at levels are combined to meet specific geoeconomical necessities and the demand for skilled occupation that today cannot be met although officiallythe unemployment exceeds 25%. The qualities issues are addressed since every student entering a level has verified abilities and potential and the staff is appropriate for each Institute' s purpose as defined by each level and territory. The key words for the whole process are a) harmonization rather than Europeanization or globalization and b) simplicity so changes can be easily enforced with minimum legislation and other disturbances. REFERENCES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6 Brook, D. University-diversity: The New Zealand experience. In: Lategan, LOK (Ed.), The Making of a University of Technology, Technikon Free State Studies in Higher Education, 3, 23-41 (2000). Bruneton, A. & Konofagos, E. & Foscolos, A., Economic and Geopolitical Importance of Eastern Mediterranean gas fields for Greece and the E.U. Emphasis on the Probable Natural Gas Deposits Occurring in the Libyan Sea within the Exclusive Economic Zone of Greece, Mineral Wealth, 160, 1, 2011, 7-30 (2011). CEDEFOP, Skills Needs In Europe-Focus In 2020, CEDEFOP Panorama Series,160, 1, 19, (2008) Krathwohl, D.R., A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy. Theory Into Practice, 41, 4, 212-218 (2002). Kabouridis, G. & Kakarelidis, G., Academic leadership in Greek Higher Educational Institutions under economic and social crisis. Proc. 2nd WIETE Annual Conference on Engineering and Technology Education, Thailand, 70-76 (2011) Eurostat, Educational Statistics at Regional Level (2012), 13 October 2012, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Education_statistics_at_regional_level