Two decades after the end of WWII, developing and evolving Western societies experienced a massive wave of youth uprisings against prevailing socio-economic realities and a battle for liberation.

Post-war generations rose up around the world, from America to Europe, dismantling social taboos and previous conservative models and stereotypes.

There was no sector of social and political life that remained unaffected by this outburst of individual liberation. Music, fashion, sexual relations, art, culture, travel, public discourse, and previous political practices radically changed.

The epicentre of these youthful uprisings were universities throughout the West, first in America and then in Western Europe, culminating in the events of May, 1968, in France (photo).

Sit-ins, massive protests and clashes with police on the streets of large European cities were common fare.

Up until 1974, Greece was ruled by the colonels’ military junta. When the youthful wave of a struggle for social and political liberation was predominant in the rest of Europe, here fear prevailed.

The uprisings at the Athens University Law School and the Athens Polytechnic covered a small portion of that social explosion. In Greece, the wave of social liberation was only half-completed.

It arrived belatedly, deficiently, and politically skewed, after the fall of the junta and the restoration of democracy in 1974.

The absence of political freedom during the dictatorship was followed by an intense politicisation in Greek universities after its collapse.

Even as universities in Western countries were assimilating the results of the youth uprisings and establishing their operation on new terms, with new rules in order to function effectively, in Greece universities were transformed into a nexus of branches of political parties and became a spawning ground for confrontational political activity, which hindered their rebirth and reordering.

Since then, all efforts at change and educational reform failed, plunging Greek universities into conditions of permanent backwardness and degradation.

Meanwhile, the world changed. Universities internationally evolved into centres of research and development, were linked to production, and became bases of scientific progress and social mobility.

In the ensuing decades, Greece squandered its forces and capabilities. Parents spent huge sums to send their children to be educated at foreign universities. The country was unable to align itself with the successive waves of educational rebirth and reordering that have prevailed all around the world.

Now, at the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Greece has an opportunity to free its universities from the deficiencies and shackles of the past, to open them up to the world, to link them to production and business enterprises, and to allow them to truly evolve into centres of research and progress.

Past concerns and reservations have been transcended by contemporary life and international educational developments, and there is no longer any room for introverted protectionism and exclusions.

Nowhere in the world does one find universities without autonomy and freedom, without their own funding and collaborations with private business enterprises and capital.

The most advanced universities in the world have evolved into very strong bases for the creation of wealth.

The arrangements and changes that are now being introduced by the government’s university reform bill seem obvious and have long been ripe. They constitute common ground on both the right and the left.

Threats of stirring tensions and schemes to produce clashes are things of the distant past and do not befit our era.

It is necessary for political parties to reach a consensus, as there is no time left for postponements and sterile disputes.