By September 10 – or by September 15 at the latest, the evaluation of the curricula of Non-State Universities is expected to be completed, provided they have previously received approval for establishment and operation, protothema.gr State Minister of State for Education, responsible for higher education, Professor Nikolaos Papaioannou, tells Nikolaos Papaioannou. For those foreign universities that do not receive licensing now, if they take corrective action based on the comments from the NTHAAE and the EOPPEP, “they will be able to resubmit the file and operate in the spring semester,” he will say.

“I will not comment on whether there are six or 15 universities that will or will not get a license. There is no official announcement, which I don’t know either,” Deputy Minister of Education, Nikolaos Papaioannou, commented to protothema.gr: “I would like to believe that the announcement will come out this week. Because we did not wish to make any ‘discount’ in the licensing procedures, after all, we remain within the timeframe, we have not exceeded it. If we had chosen to do everything ‘quickly’, obviously we would have finished today, but that is not the case,” he concludes.

What will happen to those universities that do not receive a licence

“When universities see the comments that have been made, I assume they will want to respond to them and it is obvious that they will be re-evaluated for the next licensing phase. So it does not mean that it is all over with the universities that will now be licensed,” the Deputy Minister of Education stresses.

Regarding the process that will follow, he notes: “In the case that a university does not receive a license now, it will proceed with the correction on the comments in its file and can resubmit the file. If it is eventually licensed, it will be able to start operating in the spring semester, meaning it does not have to wait until September 2026. It is understood that once the dossier is resubmitted, it will be assessed again by the NCCA and the EOPPEP to consider the new information provided. If there is a positive opinion, and these universities will soon be granted a licence to establish and operate.”

The evaluation of curricula

Once the universities are licensed, the next step is the evaluation of the curricula, initially of those universities that have been granted the establishment and operation license.

“This means that if a university has submitted 15 curricula, these will be evaluated by the NCAE according to whether they meet the classical academic process that we have in Greece – that is, the four-year programmes, how each programme is structured, whether this programme is related to the parent university…”, Papaioannou explains, clarifying:

“That is, it is not enough for a representative of the university at the NPE of Greece to come up with the curriculum… It should be a mirror image (identical to) the curriculum of the parent university. Moreover, if there are 3 years of study there, here we will make it 4 – that is, it may be that abroad, undergraduate programs are 3 years, here they become 4 years. It will be checked how the credits (ACDS) are distributed.”

How long will the process of evaluating curricula take? “I would like to think that by the first ten days of September – even a fortnight – it will be over. It’s a matter for the NCAE. It has to be done by then, to allow the time for this university to advertise its programme and be able to operate. If it receives the licence on September 25, how will it start on October 1, for example?” the Deputy Minister of Education points out and continues: “Of course, the length of the semester could theoretically have flexibility since it is a foreign university. In other words, it should not start on the first Monday of October, when Greek universities start, to complete the 13 educational weeks per semester, but should start on October 10 and continue until February 20, instead of ending on February 10. Similarly, the spring term, instead of ending on 10 July, should end on 20. In any case, for those universities that receive permission and have their curricula evaluated, there will be an opportunity to operate in the next academic term, that is, the winter term.”