Abstract
This paper aims at highlighting and interpreting current empirical facets of the Greek educational pathogeny through a sociological approach. Especially, the paper tries to investigate the relationship between education and employment in modern Greece based on the annual statistical report of KANEP/GSEE, choosing both selected facets and sociologically interpreted issues such as public and private expenditure, trends on specialties, outcomes of initial training teacher’s profile etc. According to this data, the main political challenge is based on both the decrease of public expenditure and the maintenance of significantly high levels of household expenditure. Additionally, current trends, such as «brain drain» or migration of highly educated people, prove that Greek public universities’ learning outcomes remain competitive and effective through the framework of a global labour market, notwithstanding the harsh critique blaming them for «statism» and mismatching with the labour needs.
Highlights
The Centre for Educational Policy Development of the General Confederation of Greek Labour—which has been preparing reports on education at annual basis for the last decade—released the data of its Annual Report on education at the beginning of 2021
This report can be used as a tool that monitors the key indicators and the trends of education, which reflects the evolution and progress of the country’s education system in direct correlation with the European reference framework
While the underfunding of the public education system emerges as a chronic “pathogeny”, private expenditure on education, i.e., household expenditure, appears to be systematically and significantly higher than the European average (2.1% as against 1.2% respectively) (Tables 3 and 4)
Summary
The Centre for Educational Policy Development of the General Confederation of Greek Labour—which has been preparing reports on education at annual basis for the last decade—released the data of its Annual Report on education at the beginning of 2021. The phenomenon of “shadow education” (Bray, 2011) is still omni-present, as a structural feature, through a reality where the public expenditures are decreasing drastically Symptoms such as a “brain drain”, “brain waste”, “the increasing trend of privatization” are gaining more space within the public sphere in a period where Greek society tries to alleviate the tough consequences of “memorandum” policies which have been in place since 2008 (Chalari, 2017). With no doubt this makes the dimension of public policies (Hanushek & Kain, 1972; John, 2013) more significant thanks to the crucial role that public education, especially public universities, could play for growth and public cohesion. We need to consider the issue of the Greek case not as an exclusively unique phenomenon, but as a part of a global strategy through the spectrum of globalization (Docquier & Rapoport, 2012), where education policy is forced to follow the dominant trends, i.e., the rules, pressure, and control of the global market economy
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