The government’s plan with the introduction of courses in foreign languages at state universities is to serve interests other than those of the universities themselves, Akel warned on Thursday.

The party’s MP Christos Christofides called on the universities, academics, employees, students and parents sending their children to university, to stand before the education ministry and the government of President Nikos Christodoulides and not allow them to scrap a successful model which would lead the institutions into “adventures with an undefined outcome”.

The education committee convened extraordinarily on Thursday to discuss foreign language degrees in the light of the answers it received from the education ministry.

Speaking after the meeting, Christofides said one of the questions posed by the committee was why the provisions for setting fees were stricter than those for private universities.

The education ministry said the main aim was to prevent the direct funding of public universities by the state and to avoid creating conditions of unfair competition between public and private universities.

“I think it is now clear to all that the main aim of the ministry’s approach is to stop giving money to the public universities for their courses and at the same time impose fees that would be as high as those of private universities. We are speaking about roughly €8,000 to €10,000 per year for courses in English,” Christofides said.

He explained that “this approach, which we now have in writing, overturns the so far operating philosophy of public universities, which was that since they are public, they are financed by the state.” Bachelors degrees at the University of Cyprus and the Cyprus University of Technology (Tepak) are offered free to Cypriot and EU students.

“So, for the first time, the reasoning that public universities should cover their own needs is introduced,” he added.

This reasoning, Christofides said, would “naturally lead to overturning the so far very successful operational model of our public universities, which brought our public universities in just a few years of operation to very high standards worldwide and an appreciation both in Cyprus and abroad.”

“At the same time, it is clear that the education ministry wants to serve interests foreign to our public universities,” he said.

Last month, Akel put forward a bill which would ensure that undergraduate programmes taught in foreign languages at Cyprus’ public universities were free of charge for students.

Christofides had warned that if the bill was not passed into law, “two categories of students will be created”.

One category, he said, will be Cypriot students who pay tuition fees, and the other will be Cypriot students who do not. He argued that should this come to pass, “the quality of Greek-language programmes will be degraded”.

Committee chairman and Diko MP Pavlos Mylonas had said in May that Akel’s bill will be discussed at the committee’s next meeting and added that it is his intention to put the bill to a vote in a plenary session before the summer recess.

Otherwise, he said, the discussion on the matter will continue in September.