Many of Greece's universities have been reduced to penury, with their accounts now approaching zero, following the conversion of their funds into Greek state bonds by the Bank of Greece and the subsequent PSI bond swap scheme they were forced to accept in March.

An emergency council of university rectors on Tuesday said that only 33 million euro remained of 120 million euro that 17 Greek universities had deposited with the Bank of Greece for the operating expenses, while six university accounts were now completely empty and would soon be unable to stay open.

The rectors decided to set up a legal committee to claim the money lost but at this point will focus on making university finances independent of the election of a governing board as demanded by the new framework-law and the approval of their 2012 budgets.