House committee to hold emergency meeting over foreign uni campuses
The House education committee is to hold an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss laws which will allow overseas universities to establish campuses in Cyprus and allow Cypriot public universities to begin offering undergraduate study programm
The House education committee is to hold an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss laws which will allow overseas universities to establish campuses in Cyprus and allow Cypriot public universities to begin offering undergraduate study programmes in languages other than Greek.
The committee had met behind closed doors on Wednesday morning, but that meeting was cut short after the legal service representative who was summoned to discuss the bill had to make an early exit to attend a pressing matter in court.
Committee chairman and Disy MP Pavlos Mylonas expressed his frustration at the matter, saying his party has “new positions and new questions” on both matters, and as such demanded that Education Minister Athena Michaelidou also attend Friday’s emergency meeting.
Michaelidou had not attended Wednesday morning’s meeting as it clashed with the day’s cabinet meeting.
Akel MP Andreas Kafkalias said the bill relating to overseas universities establishing campuses in Cyprus has “many problematic points”, and said there have thus far been “no answers to critical questions which were raised” and “many concerns”.
“Neither the legal service nor the education ministry was able to answer the persistent questions about the process of examining an application” submitted by a university to open a campus on the island.
He said the education ministry and legal service must provide answers “with regard to the obligations which universities must fulfil when submitting an application for the operation of a campus” and said he had been given reassurances that answers would be provided in due course on the matter.
Additionally, he demanded answers regarding an “inexplicable change of position” on the part of the education ministry regarding the payment of guarantees by universities wishing to establish campuses on the island.
Initially, the ministry had planned for universities to be required to pay an amount of money to the government as a guarantee before opening a campus in Cyprus, but the latest version of the legislation has seen this clause withdrawn.
As such, Kafkalias said, “the bill as it stands is problematic, while the ministry is unable to substantiate its position on critical issues and questions which have been raised”.
Plans to allow foreign universities to establish campuses in Cyprus have been afoot since May, when the Cyprus Agency of Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Education (Dipae) described the move to the Cyprus Mail as a “game changer”.
They went on to say that British universities may be “particularly interested” in the possibility, as it has become “increasingly difficult” for them to establish a presence outside the United Kingdom since the country left the European Union in 2020.
The education minister also extolled the plans’ virtues at the time, saying they align with the government’s broader efforts to upgrade and improve the quality of higher education in Cyprus.
“The amendment modernises the legislation, promotes the internationalisation of tertiary education, and enhances its quality,” she said. However, MPs have long remained unconvinced.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday Michaelidou stressed the importance of foreign language-taught degrees.
“Higher education must be an important axis of development and quality education for Cyprus,” she said, specifically referencing those courses.
The matter of foreign language university courses largely took a back seat during Wednesday’s discussions, but was subject to a fierce back and forth between Cyprus’ two public universities, the University of Cyprus and the Cyprus University of Technology (Tepak), and other interest groups on Tuesday.
The universities insisted that the planned programmes “do not undermine public schools” and asked whether the schools themselves are “adequately preparing our young people for the demands of today and tomorrow”.
The other groups, consisting of teachers’ trade unions and students’ unions, argued that the universities should instead focus on expanding their offering in Greek.
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