Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had a meeting with Yale University President Maurie McInnis and the rector of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Gerasimos Siasos at the Maximos Mansion on Monday morning.
The meeting was prompted by the joint postgraduate course that will be offered by the two universities on “Global Environmental Sciences and Public Health”, with financing from the Recovery and Resilience Fund.
Mitsotakis began by expressing his satisfaction that the Council of State, in a recent ruling, has judged the government’s legislation relating to the founding of non-state, non-profit universities in Greece constitutional. He also stressed that the priority, for him, will always be to ensure that state universities, “where nearly all Greek students will ultimately study, are open and promote this sort of collaboration.”
The very good cooperation between the two universities was stressed and the prospects for deepening this further were discussed, while the prime minister emphasised the importance the government attaches to boosting the extroversion of state universities and cultivating partnerships with top institutions abroad.
The joint postgraduate course is part of a memorandum of cooperation signed by NKUA and Yale in 2021 and, in this context, there was an exchange of views regarding the possibility of founding a research centre in Attica to house broader academic cooperation between the two universities.
In remarks that the start of the meeting, Mitsotakis welcomed McInnis and expressed his pleasure that the cooperation between Yale and NKUA was prospering, with the first postgraduate course ready to begin and other interesting projects on the way. “It is extremely important for us to cultivate such cooperation between our state universities and top international academic institutions,” he said.
The meeting was also attended by Education, Religions and Sports Minister Sofia Zacharaki, Minister of State Akis Skertsos and Deputy Education, Religions and Sports minister for tertiary education Nikos Papaioannou.
Source: pagenews.gr