Education Minister Loverdos Refuses University Layoffs

Loverdos said that an evaluation of staff requirements in tertiary education revealed that universities have less administrative staff than they need. The minister, who asked for the study to be carried out, said this means that none of the 1,050 employees who were placed in a public sector mobility scheme last fall should be dismissed.

“The results of the study were only made available to me today,” he said. “I had said from the start that there needs to be an evaluation and that its results should determine whether there should be any sackings. There can be no other rule.

“Since the evaluation shows that there is no need for sackings, nobody will be sacked.”

The private study indicated that Greece’s eight state universities need 4,086 administrative staff against the 3,630 that are actually employed. It also underlines that the ratio of administrative staff to students in Greece is much lower than the European Union average.

Government vice-President, Evangelos Venizelos didn't side with the Education Minister Andreas Loverdos' comments earlier in the day that there will be no administrative staff layoffs in universities on the occasion of the completion of an evaluation report requested by the ministry on the organizational charts of Greek universities, which didn't detect any redundancies.

Venizelos clarified that the evaluation report must be studied closely, before jumping to any decisions.