Elements and Symptoms of a Poor Higher Education system: Evidence from a Greek University

University studies in Greece are characterized by a symptom usually described as ‘prolonged student status.’ It refers to students who prolong the period of their studies beyond the normal time, sometimes by many years. This paper, besides recording the distribution of the duration of studies in a public institution, reveals that a longer period of studies is strongly and negatively associated with academic performance. Then, it seeks to identify the causes of the symptom by examining two hypotheses. The first attributes prolonged student status to the operation of some objective factors such as differences in students’ initial abilities and differences in students’ socio-economic background. The second hypothesis associates a long stay at the university with the educational setting. The existing evidence lends support to the second hypothesis.