“The number of students in Tbilisi must be reduced to around 60%,” stated Irakli Kobakhidze, the Prime Minister of “Georgian Dream,” today, on November 26, during “Georgian Dream’s” address in Parliament.
According to him, the education reform envisions the development of two cities Kutaisi and Rustavi and an increase in the number of students studying in these cities.
“As of today, more than 85% of students study in the capital, which causes excessive strain on Tbilisi, while other important cities, such as Kutaisi and Rustavi, are not adequately utilized. Therefore, decentralization of the system is important, and we want to focus on developing the infrastructure of these two cities.
Ultimately, this will lead to a sharp decrease in Tbilisi’s share of the total student population. This is the objective. We believe that the share of students in Tbilisi should drop to about 60%. The remaining 40% should be distributed among other cities. This is the main direction of the concept,” Kobakhidze said.
According to him, there are currently 64 universities operating in Georgia.
“This itself indicates that the system is unhealthily formed, and in a country of our size—especially given economic and other challenges it is impossible to maintain equally high quality across all of them… Our goal is to radically change this situation,” he noted.
Kobakhidze also explained another goal of the “reform,” which includes the idea of “one city – one faculty.”
“In Tbilisi, there should be one faculty per state university. But this does not apply to private universities,” he said.
The education reform announced by “Georgian Dream” has received sharp criticism from those employed in the education sector. They believe that the goal of this so-called reform is to abolish university autonomy and establish state control.
According to Iliauni’s rector, Nino Doborjginidze, the consequences of this reform will be catastrophic, because its aim is to eliminate critical thinking from universities and bring them into full submission to the regime.