Open Letter: Call for Action Against the Higher Education Reform in Georgia

16.01.2026

In October 2025, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze unveiled a concept for a radical reform of the higher education system. The aim is to bring the universities under full state control and decouple Georgia from the European higher education system. The country is thus drifting towards academic and education policy isolation.
Over the last two decades, Georgia has created modern universities and integrated them into the European Higher Education Area. Georgia has hitherto participated in the Bologna Process and has thus promoted the mobility, international competitiveness and employability of Georgian scholars.

The internationalisation of Georgian universities has led to an improvement in the quality of higher education in international rankings and to extensive networking with universities in Europe, particularly in Germany.

The planned reform spells the end for university autonomy in Georgia. Core faculties of several universities in the capital Tbilisi are to be uprooted from their established environment and relocated to smaller cities. Glossed over as an efficiency gain, the move is intended to reinforce control over lecturers and students. The plans go against the spirit of free university research and education. Their implementation will cause irreparable harm to the Georgian higher education landscape.

Germany is traditionally a close partner of Georgia’s universities. Some of the numerous university partnerships have existed for more than a century. The planned restructuring will destroy partnerships that have grown over decades.

The plans are connected to an authoritarian turn that has been under way in Georgia for three years. The government is engaged in the systematic destruction of organised civil society and independent media. Their work is being obstructed and their international funding criminalised.

The planned higher education reform is a further step in this process. The Georgian government is taking systematic action against the universities because they are spaces of independent thinking and of resistance to authoritarian governance and the decoupling of Georgia from European societies.

The German Association for East European Studies expresses its solidarity with Georgian colleagues who stand for the independent scholarship and freedom of teaching that characterise the European Research and Education Area.

We call upon the German government to make the consequences of academic and education policy self-isolation clear to the Georgian government. Georgia is a valued European centre of education and partner in international research cooperation. It is in the interests of Georgia itself and the European academic community to continue to guarantee freedom of scholarship and international cooperation for the Georgian universities.