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Authoritarian regimes understand the importance of controlling education for their own survival. Some, like the Bolsheviks, combined a vision of social transformation with a political strategy of control and discipline. Others, such as Georgian Dream, the party currently in power in Georgia, are less ideologically driven; they seek political domination through regulation, punishment, control over citizens’ livelihoods, and manipulation of the law. Georgian Dream has neither a coherent teleology nor a credible plan for Georgia’s future. It is a regime without imagination or aspiration, guided by a simple goal: stay in power. To do that, it needs to patrol or, even better, close political spaces such as university campuses where resistance can grow into revolt.
The Perils of Higher Education
Higher education is one of the most dangerous spaces for authoritarian regimes. Universities have a mission to examine, teach, and question. They are natural participants in a democracy but potentially subversive ones in an autocracy. Historically, students have played a leading role in challenging oppressive regimes. Examples include China’s Tiananmen Square protests and Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution in 1989; the Tahrir Square rallies during the Arab Spring in 2011; and most recently in 2024, the overthrow of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh. The authoritarian regime in Georgia understands its own “regime survival package”—as Anne Applebaum puts it in her new book, Autocracy, Inc.—includes control over the state’s higher education system, as well as the media and the police.
Georgia’s universities have now become part of a broader government assault on Georgia’s cultural institutions. In a November 2023 report, Pen America documented Georgian Dream’s capture of the state’s leading cultural institutions, including the National Museum, the Georgian National Film Center, the Museum of Fine Arts, and even the Tbilisi State Conservatory, through dismissals, budgetary controls, removal of grants, and staffing changes (e.g., the replacement of independently minded directors with Georgian Dream loyalists). For Georgian Dream, independent cultural institutions and self-governing educational institutions are the same problem. In the Georgian Dream narrative, they are aligned with what Irakli Kobakhidze, the prime minister, called an “aggressive and intolerant foreign-funded ideology and movement designed to weaken [Georgian] state and social institutions.” This “foreign-funded ideology”—often associated with the “deep state” and embodied by the European Union—is, according to Kobakhidze, threatening Georgian national sovereignty by attacking its values and traditions.
The government is a defender of the faith. Its tight relationship with the Georgian Orthodox Church echoes the conservative alliance of Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain with the Catholic Church, which provided the moral and spiritual justification for dictatorship. The language of Georgian Dream’s leaders evokes an embattled Georgian state, resisting threats from abroad and fighting traitors within. The history of the 2008 war with Russia has been revised to support a tale of betrayal by Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-Western and allegedly warmongering former president. The new narrative shifts the blame for the war from Russian aggression to Georgian adventurism. It legitimizes Georgian Dream’s October 2025 petition to the Georgian Constitutional Court to ban the United National Movement (UNM), which is now seen as culpable for the 2008 invasion.
It is not exceptional for the state to regulate higher education and accreditation. The difference is that in a democratic system, transparency, elections, university administrators, and civil society organizations moderate state control over academic and intellectual life. However, these constraints have been dismantled under Georgian Dream—which has rigged elections, introduced the Foreign Agents Registration Act in April 2025 (which ended foreign funding for Georgian civil society organizations), imprisoned opposition party leaders (many of whom face up to 15 years in prison), and suppressed opposition media.
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was alleged to have said that when the whole picture is considered, victories are hard to distinguish from defeats. Georgian Dream’s accumulated power has left it the only authority in the land. It is in a commanding position, but politically isolated from ordinary Georgians and their needs. This is a dangerous position for any unpopular government and undermines its ability to make informed policy decisions. There is no longer anyone on the domestic scene who can take the blame for government failures and increasingly visible corruption.
Islands of Dissent
The last major educational reform in Georgia in 2004 was directed at weeding out corruption while being promoted as a democratizing measure. It was supposed to enhance equality, access, university autonomy, and end financial dependence on the state. It was also pro-European and aimed to integrate Georgia’s universities into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the Bologna Process. Twenty years later, the reform has failed to live up to expectations. There has been little improvement in terms of teaching quality, university autonomy, student access, or financial resources for higher education. Most of Georgia’s 19 state and 45 private universities lack a rigorous academic structure. In 2025, Georgian government spending on higher education as a share of GDP remained one of the lowest of former Soviet republics at 0.3%. Georgian Dream’s own commitment to expanding educational quality, access, and autonomy, as well as a deeper alignment with EU standards promised in its 2022 program, the National Strategy of Education and Science of Georgia for 2022–2030, is no longer remembered.
The 2004 reform nonetheless left an important legacy: It shifted the landscape in Georgian higher education. Integration into the EHEA internationalized Georgia’s universities; it promoted collaboration and mobility for both Georgian and European students. Several Georgian universities distinguished themselves for scholarship and research, and they have survived the state’s use of accreditation and cuts in grant funding to restrict their autonomy. Private universities like the Free University and the University of Georgia are good examples of this. Ilia State University, one of Georgia’s top state universities, facilitates high-quality research among its faculty and has become a showcase for academic freedom and self-governance. In the current intellectual climate, these three institutions have become centers of dissent against Georgian Dream’s anti-European policies. They are the primary targets of Georgian Dream’s educational “reform.”
Whipping Students into Shape
Georgian Dream’s leaders are exasperated by the opposition, which continues to circulate in the universities. The massive public demonstrations on the streets of Tbilisi in winter 2024–2025—sparked by Georgian Dream’s November 2024 announcement that it was suspending Georgia’s EU accession process—were made up of large numbers of students and faculty. The government’s National Reform Concept for Higher Education, announced by Kobakhidze on October 16, 2025, is designed to put an end to the embarrassing persistence of civil disobedience on Tbilisi’s streets.
There are seven proposals in the National Reform Concept. First, the government will “deconcentrate” higher education from the capital to the regions. This requires the relocation of universities, classrooms, and dormitories to outside of the Tbilisi metropolitan area. Second, a rule called “one city-one faculty” will assign one university per city to teach one academic discipline (other universities in the same city will focus on other disciplines). This, the government claims, will end “inefficient” competition between universities and departments. Third, the distribution of academic positions will be made through a hierarchical system of fixed-term appointments regulated by the government. Fourth, research and teaching, described in the “reform” as poorly integrated, will be managed and directed by the central government. Fifth, student intake will be regulated by the state to ensure alignment with the job market. Sixth, funding for student grants and vouchers will be redirected to promote government-defined priorities. Seventh, the modernization of university buildings and facilities will be financed by selling off university buildings located on prime real estate in Tbilisi.
Some aspects of the National Reform Concept look reasonable, such as the de-concentration of higher education from the capital to the regions. However, the government’s agenda is not about modernizing the curriculum or raising the quality of teaching and research. Rather, every one of the seven proposals is designed to tighten government control over higher education. As mentioned above, the relocation of the student body is an attempt to remove the danger of sudden political eruptions in the capital. Management of the universities will be placed in the hands of rectors and administrators beholden to the government. University autonomy, and with it, control over academic programs and curricula will be taken out of the hands of faculty. University budgets will be reduced, and dissenting faculty removed, as part of the reorganization. The “reform” is also a perfect mechanism for shedding undesirable faculty and staff, which was evident from the very beginning. The conception, design, and proposed steps for implementing the National Reform Concept were undertaken by a government-appointed State Commission on University Reform, which excluded university personnel and students. The goal was to establish a system in which hiring and academic priorities would be under government control.
A Risky Business
The reorganization of Georgia’s university life is a hazardous proposition. The National Reform Concept is the latest sign that Georgian Dream has no strategy for building legitimacy or political support essential to its long-term survival. Georgia has a history of youthful revolts: in 1956, 1978, 1989, 2003, and 2024–2025. The proposed reorganization increases the likelihood of conflict with university students in 2026. It is an acknowledgement of the regime’s fear and isolation from a younger generation of educated Georgians who work in a fragile economy with dismal employment prospects. The “reform” will make no impact on the long-term problems of a weak industrial base, record trade deficits, high urban unemployment, excessive poverty rates, and high household indebtedness. The government lacks an active labor market policy or strategy for increasing investment in human capital, particularly in higher education. The youth unemployment rate is consistently high, for example, reaching 52% in 2021.
The proposal to sell off university buildings and transport students to dormitories and classrooms outside of the city will lead to more corruption, with university buildings in Tbilisi potentially being sold to Georgian Dream-aligned businesses. Meanwhile, students’ frustration with their de facto exclusion from the city will likely intensify.
This is a government in its fourth term governing without an opposition in a period of political and economic stagnation. If dissent cannot be expressed through parties, it will play out in the streets. Georgian Dream has powerful instruments to hold on to power, such as Bidzina Ivanishvili’s colossal wealth and dominance of Georgia’s business world. The government controls the police and is backed by the Georgian Orthodox Church and media. It exercises economic patronage in the regions and engages in lucrative (and illicit) trade with Russia. The National Reform Concept has added one more reason to ponder Sartre’s remark about the relationship between victory and defeat.
Georgian Dream runs a fragile system, which relies on intimidation and control rather than loyalty and support. In 2026, it will face an unstable and weaker political base due to an economy that remains stagnant (the high annual GDP growth rates reported by the Georgian government do not reflect the real economy experienced by most Georgians). The absence of any constraints, such as business transparency, independent civil servants, unbiased judges, and open competition for contracts, will reinforce Georgian Dream’s trajectory toward a mafia-type state. In October 2025, the home of former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, along with those of multiple top officials in his government, was searched by investigators. Garibashvili was subsequently indicted for money laundering, and his luxurious apartment in Tbilisi seized.
In 2026 and beyond, Georgia’s students, despite the current pause in their activism, will graduate into an economy where everything is rigged—access to those without connections will continue to be closed. The National Reform Concept will only exacerbate students’ alienation from an increasingly corrupt and sclerotic government. Students will have a role to play when the cracks in the government widen and the opportunity for change arises.
[1] Stephen Jones is a Harvard University Davis Center Associate, having founded and formerly served as the director of the Program on Georgian Studies at the Davis Center. He is also a professor of modern Georgian history at Ilia State University in Georgia.
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