A new, innovative service aimed at attracting a greater number of international students to Greek universities’ curricula has been developed by Study in Greece (SiG), the national body for academic internationalization.

More specifically, responding to the needs of the internationalization of Greek HEIs and utilizing both its expertise and its international network of partners, SiG aspires to act as a central gateway for international students to enter Greek universities through the single platform @SiG (Apply to Study in Greece)

This is a process similar to that of UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service), which is the UK’s central service for university and college admissions applications, operating as a single platform. On it, applicants can find programmes of study, submit their applications, and track the progress of their applications regarding full-time study in the UK

The main functions of SiG

Now, Study in Greece offers the ability to process the admission applications of those interested in studying in Greece.

In particular, this digital tool serves three main functions of SiG:

a) the promotion of study programmes,
b) the promotion and promotion of students from target markets in cooperation with local recruitment agents,

c) the management of applications from abroad.

With this unique service, SiG becomes a recruitment hub for Greek higher education, offering the opportunity for Greek HEIs to attract and enroll in their programmes in an organized, easy, fast and without any financial burden in advance, students from different corners of the world.

“The specificity – or rather the uniqueness – of this service for Greek universities lies in the fact that each institution chooses which curriculum, mainly English-language, it prefers to promote abroad to attract foreign students,” SiG’s president, Professor Christos Michalakelis, begins to tell protothema.gr to add: “Through the process, we can now have measurable and recorded data on the number of foreign or expatriate students coming to study in Greece. For each foreign student who enrols in a Greek university, the SiG is paid 10% of the tuition fees for the first year of undergraduate studies or of the total tuition fees if it is for postgraduate studies.”

The benefits of studying in Greece for universities

According to him, “with the additional services provided by Study in Greece, universities are ‘relieved’ of the ‘clutter’ involved in the implementation of individual programmes, and often without the experience and expertise, thus being distracted from their essential academic mission.

In addition, significant economies of scope and scale are created, as Study in Greece, as the cooperative of universities in Greece, in a promising market, has already allowed negotiating to attract high-quality students.

Finally, it is worth noting that Study in Greece utilizes for the benefit of universities the wide network of partners it has developed over the years of its operation, which includes the Embassies and Consulates of Greece abroad, foreign Embassies in Greece, the Greek community and Greek teachers abroad, the extensive network of expatriate media, schools abroad and numerous educational agents, who, after quality control and continuous evaluation of their services, will result in the attraction of international students to the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes of Greek universities”, concludes the president of Study in Greece.