John Botis¹, Antonios Chatzigeorgiou², Gregorios Chatzilymperis¹, Konstantinos Kalafatakis³, Eleni Katsouni⁴, Naoum Mylonas⁵, Nikolina Skandali⁶, Alexandros Skandalis⁷, Eirini Vagena⁸, Apostolos Zarros^9
1Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
²Department of Internal Medicine III and Institute of Physiology, University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
³College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK,
⁴University of Oxford, Oxford, England, UK.
⁵Department of Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.
⁶Institute of Neurology, University College London (UCL), London, England, UK.
⁷Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, England, UK.
⁸The Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, University of California, San Francisco, USA. College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
⁹College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
DOI: 10.4103/0976-9668.107325

We, herein, urge for the need of a framework that could provide a platform of action toward the elimination of the adverse effects that the established recession and funding deprivation have caused (and will probably continue to cause) on the functioning of the Hellenic academic institutions. As highlighted on this letter’s title, we believe that a four axons’ systematic action framework should be set forward by the Hellenic scientific community and the Greek government; this framework should: (a) encourage the extroversion toward the international scientific community (inform; to provide an exhaustive and systematic presentation of the effects that the Greek crisis has upon both teaching and research conducted within the country’s academic institutions through every possible means, to seek for international support and collaborations as well as to encourage the suggestion of novel approaches toward the increase of teaching and research quality in parallel to a lowering of their cost), (b) enforce the compliance of the current academic practices with successful international administrative, teaching and research ones (conform; to adopt those international examples of academic excellence that could provide up-to-date academic training and research quality-ensurance and develop an integrated system of Total Quality Management), (c) adopt extensive structural changes and innovative practices (reform; to allow for extensive changes in the institutions’ structure, the Introduction of managerial practices in the governance of the Hellenic academic institutions as well as to provide the necessary legislation for the establishment of a more transparent system of institutional management) and (d) maintain the high standard of its excellence centers and prioritize the dedication of the country’s academic institutions to provide high-quality academic education (do not deform; to ensure the viability of the country’s excellence centers and their nonprofitable nature, reward its personnel’s efforts and encourage the prioritization of academic teaching/training – the latter is, anyway, constitutionally established as the main scope of the Hellenic academic institutions). Read more…