According to the annual review of university global rankings published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Greek universities have slipped considerably in their ranking.
Of the six top Greek universities that have consistently found themselves on QS’s list of the top ranked 600 universities around the world, five have fallen in ranking this year and the University of Crete has dropped off of the list of top research institutes.
The National Technical University of Athens has managed to maintain the highest of all Greek universities on the list coming in at number 400 on the global list. However, even that university has slipped some 19 places in the rankings.
A determining factor for universities performance according to QS’s annual report is the amount of financial resources an institute has available. Ben Sowter, the head of QS intelligence says that Greece has a very low level of state spending on education, research and development coming in at only 1.24 percent of gross domestic product which differs greatly from the average European Union expenditure of 2.03 percent of GDP in other member states.
Due to the financial crisis hitting Greece over the past several years, many educational institutes have seen cut backs and depletion of funds, making it hard to attract new researchers from abroad and installing new international research programs, the report stresses.
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