Mass higher education and the social sciences in Greece

This article aims to contribute to the debate on major changes in tertiary education in Europe over the last 15 years by focusing on mass higher education in Greece and the place of the social sciences in it. It examines the main objectives and effects of the significant educational reform, introduced by the Panhellenic Socialist Party in the early 1980s, and of the subsequent amendments to it, with an emphasis on excessive state control over higher education, and the statist/clientelistic mode in which graduate markets function in Greek society. These characteristics account for many of the rigidities in the structure of the social sciences and put severe limits on the ability of the Greek higher education system to respond to the challenges of European competition in education and research.