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In response to the online comments about "Styx and stones", let me briefly dispel some misunderstandings.

I wish I could do agitprop nowadays, as has been claimed! The sad facts are quite different. The views contained in the feature were first expressed in a series of Greek newspaper articles in 1983, barely a year after my first appointment at the University of Athens. More articles followed in 1990. In 1991, all the articles were collected in a small book, together with some practical proposals. I spoke and wrote again about Greek higher education in 2004, 2010 and 2011. This is probably the last time.

The controversy about linking the university to the job market I have always regarded as a non-issue. A university producing unemployable graduates is fit only for a leisure class of idle gentlemen, living off their rents.

If I have a bias writing now about Greek university reform, it is not political: it is existential. Unlike my students and my younger colleagues, I do not have the option of starting or restarting a career abroad. I am on the verge of compulsory retirement, having wasted my entire working life in the Greek university. Self-pity is to be resisted at all times, but I cannot help crying for my beloved country.

George Th. Mavrogordatos, Professor of political science, University of Athens