A new system whereby the current university entrance regime in Greece is replaced by admission based on a pupil’s grade point average on their high school diploma was announced over the weekend by the relevant education minister.
Nevertheless, Minister Costas Gavroglou, one of the more far-left cadres in the current Tsipras Cabinet, said the new admissions system will be introduced in 2020.
The date, of course, comes a year after general elections are scheduled to take place in the country, with the current poll-trailing SYRIZA party now appearing as the underdog in repeating a first-past-the-poll showing.
At present, the higher education admission system is based on a nationwide series of daily tests taken by all applicants at the same time (end of May, early June) and on various subjects, depending on the academic direction a teen wants to take at the tertiary level.
The initiative was announced by Gavroglou, a university professor specializing on the history of science, during an interview with the Sunday weekly “RealNews”.
The minister said the final year of high school will be a sort of “preparatory” year for higher education.
Greece’s universities and other tertiary institutions widely trail, for the most part, the level of other west European and North American counterparts.
While the current university entrance system is considered difficult, nerve-racking and sometimes unfair, a Grecian version of China’s well-known “Gaokao”, it nevertheless is one of the more egalitarian and non-discriminatory systems in the crisis-battered country.
