Should private education be a choice even at the highest levels or money should not be an issue when education is concerned?

LOOK at the faculty list for any leading university in America or Europe and you will be struck by the number of Greek names. Campuses all over the Western world—especially Britain—are also full of Greek students, many of whom get excellent results under pressure from parents who have stretched their family budgets to give their children the best chance. But despite the importance that Greeks attach to education, Greece has some of the worst universities in Europe.

Marietta Giannakou, the Greek education minister, hopes to start correcting that. She says there are about 5,000 scientists and professors of Hellenic origin who might be lured back to their native land if its university system were more rational and freed from the state's stranglehold. But the minister's efforts at reform have run into a wave of violent protests, both among students and among academics who like the status quo.

Instead of sitting their qualifying exams, Greek students spent the final weeks of the academic year staging noisy street demonstrations. Last week, a group of extremists among a 10,000-strong student protest in Athens hurled petrol bombs and paving-stones at police, who fought back with tear gas. The protesters claim to be inspired by those at the Athens Polytechnic who tried to overthrow Greece's ruling colonels three decades ago. But graffiti around Athens University explain their main gripe: they are enraged by the centre-right government's talk of ending the state's monopoly on higher education and introducing private, not-for-profit universities.

Such universities would certainly charge for tuition, but they could also get cash from Greek shipping tycoons and other frustrated benefactors, who now endow departments of Greek studies at American universities and would love a chance to be similarly generous at home. Greece's economy—one of the weakest in the euro area—would improve faster if more students could earn MBAs and doctorates in computer sciences at home, Mrs Giannakou argues.
Even if the mood on the streets were calmer, she would not be able to authorise independent universities at a stroke. That requires a change in the constitution, a complex procedure that starts in the life of one parliament but can be completed only in the next. But there are other things that parliament could, in theory, do now—such as set time limits for students to finish their courses, or make them pay for some tuition and textbooks. Those were among the aims of an education bill which Mrs Giannakou had hoped to push through parliament during its partial recess this summer. After the recent protests, the bill has been shelved until the autumn.
The centre-right government will not give up on education reform. One reason why Costas Karamanlis, the American-educated prime minister, is prepared to tackle it is that the Socialist opposition leader, George Papandreou (who has degrees from American and British universities), agrees on the need for change.

Higher education is only one area of Greek life where common sense—and cooler heads in the top ranks of both main political parties—points one way, while long-established practice, and the mood on the street, point in the opposite direction. Much the same applies to the security situation in the Aegean, where military competition between Greece and Turkey costs billions of dollars—and puts at risk even larger amounts of tourist revenues, in the event of a serious incident. A lot of money could be freed to improve its education system, if Greece were somehow able to reduce the share