RECTORS and chairmen of the six universities have announced a drive to turn Cyprus into a regional centre of higher education. It is difficult not to laugh when we hear these regional centre claims, because we have heard them on countless occasions over the years, without anything ever being done. It is almost as if we could become a regional centre for something or other because a government minister thought it was a good idea to mention it in a speech.
Over the years there has been talk of Cyprus becoming a regional medical centre, a telecommunications centre, a financial markets centre, a scientific research centre, a film production centre. The only time we succeeded was as an offshore business centre but that was a long time ago, and most of the companies moved out once the tax regime changed. Since then, there has been talk of setting up all types of centres but none has materialised because nobody has any idea of how to go about it.
Now, the heads of the universities have decided that we should become a higher education centre, but hearing their proposals, raises suspicions that their main concern is state help. The president of the Cyprus University Charis Charalambous suggested that the state should allocate more funds to research and make it easier for foreign researchers to come here. This is a nebulous idea which ignores the fact that the universities would have to compete rather with hundreds of much bigger and longer-established universities to attract researchers even if the funds were available.
Another proposal was for the government to spend funds promoting our universities abroad like the British Council has been doing, with great success. He then took up the complaints of the private universities, urging the government to introduce a new, faster procedure for processing visa applications; he also said that restrictions on what type of jobs foreign students could take should be lifted.
But would this help make Cyprus a regional centre for higher education? Perhaps it would allow private universities to enrol a few hundred more students, but it would not turn us into a regional centre. There was no mention of raising education standards and of making our universities centres of excellence that would help us compete with those in other countries? Surely this must be the priority if we want to become a regional centre.
Our universities need to develop a reputation for their high academic standards before we can talk of turning Cyprus into a regional centre for higher education. And this is not going to happen by speeding up the issuing of visas or by the government offering Cypriots financial incentives to study here rather than go abroad.
