Greece to close, merge, privatize more than 300 universities and colleges: "Athena Plan"

[HiPointDem]

More than 4,000 students protested outside the Parliament on Thursday as Greek lawmakers voted for “Athena plan” that will merge or even close down more than 300 university and technical college faculties and departments. The mergers are imposed by Greece’s international lenders, the EU-IMF-ECB Troika, in an effort to cut public expenditure.

http://images.watchit.gr/?h=398&w=600&src=

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Athens: students protest controversial education ‘reforms’

Students took to the streets of downtown Athens on Wednesday to protest the so-called education ’reforms’ that will shut down universities and technical colleges in the name of Troika-imposed austerity. The controversial plan carrying the euphemistic title “Athena” , the ancient Greek Goddess of wisdom, foresees the merger and shutting down of 384 departments and faculties of universities and technical colleges as well as the closure of some universities and colleges. Furthermore, the plan will reduced the number of entrants blocking the way to higher education.

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2013/03/14/athens-students-block-up-education-ministry-over-reforms/

Athens: Students block up Education Ministry over ‘reforms’

Hundreds of students have been blocking up the Education Ministry since Thursday morning to protest the planned mergers of technical colleges (TEI).

Tension rose when students tried to break the iron gate of the ministry and threatening to enter if their demand to meet Education Minister Kostas Arvanitopoulos was rejected. The political leadership gave in and their is currently a meeting between the students and the minister. Some students’ group marched towards the Athens University in the city’s center where a protest rally is to take place.

Students have been protesting since last week, the planned merger and closing down of 384 departments and faculties of universities and technical colleges in the context of Troika-imposed austerity. The mayor of Mesologgi and two members of the TEI community started a hunger strike three days ago...

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2013/03/14/athens-students-block-up-education-ministry-over-reforms/

Greek parliament overturns right to free, universal education (Sounds like they've got their own version of the "Emergency Dictatorship" there)

On Thursday the Greek parliament voted to pass legislation, codenamed the Athena Plan, aimed at the destruction of free, state-provided higher education. The law was rammed through in flagrant violation of the Greek constitution, which does not allow for the abolition of universities.

Athena results in the immediate closure of four universities (ten percent of the remaining 40). Some 20 percent of Greece’s technical institutions will also be abolished, with a number merged to establish privatized colleges. A total of 129 university (AEI) and technical college (TEI) departments will be closed immediately and a further 26 other departments gradually phased out.

As it passed, more than 5,000 students, including some from faculties in Patras and other cities, protested outside the parliament in Athens. One of the protesters stressed to PressTV the dictatorial nature of the new law, stating, “Today they passed an unprecedented bill that will allow the education minister to legislate restrictions and spending cuts, without the need for parliamentary voting. His signature alone with suffice to that effect. But we will not accept that..."

The right to free education was first enshrined in the constitution following the fall of the military Junta in 1974. In 1975 Article 16 became part of the constitution and stated, “All Greeks are entitled to free education on all levels at State educational institutions”. It adds, “Education at university level shall be provided exclusively by institutions which are fully self-governed public law legal persons.” Point 16:8 of the constitution states, “The establishment of university level institutions by private persons is prohibited”.

Under Athena, it will become easier for private firms to invest in faculties, and appoint the personnel of their choosing, thus bringing private management into education provision. Institutions will be required to seek private sponsorship and connect their educational programmes more and more to the demands of the market. Athena’s focus is to promote those faculties specialising on economics and business, while other departments will be allowed to go to the wall.

In the last several years, academics have suffered salaries cuts of more than 50 percent, with the budgets of many institutions also slashed by more than half... Over the winter months hundreds of schools nationwide were forced to try to function without any heating oil, computers and insufficient textbooks.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/02/athe-a02.html

[JDPriestly]

1. This dooms Greece.

I wonder whether they will now break from the European Union and just let their debts go. It might be the wise choice. I don't know, but if I were in Greece, I would consider it.

This is folly.

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. It Is The US Plan Because I Will Guarantee That Our Billionaires Were Also Involved In Trashing

Europe. Remember the GOP and its billionaire allies have been attacking "socialist" Europe for years. This plan is what is in store for the US. They want to sell all our universities to the corporations.

[HiPointDem]

3. I wouldn't be surprised. The same plan is being enacted all over the world.

[Live and Learn]

5. +1 They want all of our tax dollars going to private corporations. nt

[Javaman]

12. Naa, they gop/financial corporations make more money off of indebted ex-students

then they do off of non-loan holding students.

the very last thing the student loan grifters want is less in-debt students. student loans are big business.

the tuition rates have sky rocketed over the last 30 years. We have the largest over educated minimum wage force ever. And as such, these indebted students still feel the bizarre obligation to pay off loans they will never ever be able to pay off.

and that's the song they corporations sing all day long while they count their money.

one day soon, that bubble will burst and much like the housing bubble, it won't be pretty.

[Octafish]

15. Goldman Sachs plunders the globe.

From 3 years back:

Yes, It Really is a Capitalist Plot

The Fall of Greece

by DIANA JOHNSTONE
CounterPunch MARCH 01, 2010

EXCERPT...

To put it simply, the Greek crisis shows what happens when a weak member of this Union is in trouble. It is the same as what happens on the world scale, where there is no such morally pretentious union perpetually congratulating itself on its devotion to human rights. The economically strong protect their own interests at the expense of the economically weak.

The crisis broke last autumn after George Papandreou’s PASOK party won elections, took office and discovered that the cupboard was bare. The Greek government had cheated to get into the EU’s euro zone in 2001 by cooking the books to cover deficits that would have disqualified it from membership in the common currency. The European Treaties capped the acceptable budget deficit at 3 per cent and public debt at 60 per cent of GDP respectively. In fact, this limit is being widely transgressed, quite openly by France. But major scandal arrived with revelations that Greece’s budget deficit reached 12.7 per cent in 2009, with a gross debt forecast for 2010 amounting to 125 per cent of GDP.

Of course, European leaders got together to declare solidarity. But their speeches were designed not so much to reassure the increasingly angry and desperate Greek people as to soothe “the markets” – the real hidden almighty gods of the European Union. The markets, like the ancient gods, have a great old time tormenting mere mortals in trouble, so their response to the Greek problem was naturally to rush to profit from it. For instance, when Greece is obliged to issue new bonds this year, the markets can blithely demand that Greece double its interest rates, on grounds of increased “risk” that Greece won’t pay, thus making it that much harder for Greece to pay. Such is the logic of the free market.

What the EU leaders meant by “solidarity” in their appeal to the gods was not that they were going to pour public money into Greece, as they poured it into their troubled banks, but that they intended to squeeze the money owed the banks out of the Greek people.

The squeezing is to take the forms made familiar over the past disastrous decades by the International Monetary Fund: the Greek state is enjoined to cut public expenses, which means firing public employees, cutting their overall earnings, delaying retirement, economizing on health care, raising taxes, and incidentally probably raising the jobless rate from 9.6 per cent to around 16 per cent, all with the glorious aim of bringing the deficit down to 8.7 per cent this year and thus appeasing the invisible gods of the market.

SNIP...

There was no such supervision of the financial fiddling which caused this mess. The EU statistics agency Eurostat recently discovered and revealed that in 2001, Goldman Sachs secretly (“but legally”, protest its executive officers) helped the right-wing Greek government meet EU membership criteria by using a complicated “currency swap” that masked the extent of public deficit and national debt. [See Andrew Cockburn and Marshall Auerback, on this site.] Who understands how that worked? I think it is fair to guess that not even Angela Merkel, who is trained as a scientist, understands clearly what went on, much less the incompetent Greek politicians who accepted the Goldman Sachs trickery. It allowed them to create an illusion of success – for a while. Success meant being a “member of the club” of the rich, and it can be argued that this notion of success has actually favored bad government at the national level. Belonging to the EU gave a false sense of security that contributed to the irresponsibility of incompetent political leaders.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/03/01/the-fall-of-greece/

Don't you just love disaster capitalism, Wall Street?

[dtom67]

4. this is why doomsday prepping is becoming more popular....

Because the collapse of our system seems preferable compared to the bleak future that seems to be heading our way.
No freedom of speech
No right to assemble( unless you are a tea partier )
No social spending
No Free Press
No Free internet
No right to Privacy
No freedom from torture
No voting rights
No rights regarding your own body
And it gets worse every year...

[blkmusclmachine]

7. Really makes one reflect back on 9/11.

[Octafish]

16. Absolutely. Oldsters like me reflect back to 11/22/63.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3029417

[blkmusclmachine]

6. Global push to rob, steal, & plunder.

And right in plain sight, too, with the most bullsh/tty excuses anyones ever heard. Cuz really, whatchagonnado?! And whoyagonnacall?!

[SamReynolds]

8. This is the testing ground.

Our media is keeping us completely oblivious to what is really happening in Greece. If you guessed, 'Because they plan on making it happen here in the US?', you get a cookie, which you must take out a loan for and then pay interest.

[woo me with science]

9. This is where we are headed.

When will we have had enough?

[HiPointDem]

17. already happening here

[woo me with science]

18. +1

[n2doc]

19. Yep. They've been closing and consolidating here in Georgia (the state) for the past few years. n/t

[hobbit709]

10. The cradle of democracy is becoming the tomb of democracy.

Which is what the 1% have always wanted.

[Javaman]

11. and just which ones get to stay open?

the ones that make the most money? Of course. Not the ones that turn out the best students.

This is a example of disaster capitalism on the backs of the new generation. There will be X amount of slots available to go to college. If you don't make it, well, tough luck.

[woo me with science]

13. kick

[marmar]

14. k/r