On the evening of February 12, students at Tbilisi's Ilia State University spilled out of their campus and onto Chavchavadze Avenue, one of the capital's main thoroughfares, occupying the roadway in a march that carries a penalty risk of jail. They held national flags and banners reading "Protect Education" and "Our Country Needs European Experience, Science, and Education". 

It was not a spontaneous outburst. Georgian Dream's education overhaul, introduced in late 2025 and enacted in February, operates under the banner of "one city, one faculty" and reorganises state universities so that each specialises in a single subject area, with student numbers determined by the government. Officials say the changes align graduate output with labour market needs. Critics say the reform is politically motivated, designed to hollow out critical thinking, punish dissent, and funnel graduates toward jobs requiring few skills, predetermined by the state. Students and faculty say the changes violate Georgia's constitution.

Ilia State University has built a reputation as Georgia's most academically independent public university; one with strong international rankings, an integrated research culture, and a history of outspoken opposition to government policy. Under new quotas approved by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, it will be permitted to admit just 300 undergraduate students in the upcoming academic year, down from 3,828 the previous year, a reduction of roughly 92%. Ilia will retain only pedagogy programmes and STEM subjects. Its humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and interdisciplinary programmes, the disciplines for which it is best known, will be cut.

In a formal statement, its governing bodies condemned the decision as "unconstitutional", arguing it "destroys internationally recognised research areas and academic programmes, as well as the country's prospects for European development". Deputy rector Giorgi Gvalia said: "There is complete unity within the university community. We will use every legal mechanism available because we believe it is illegitimate and contradicts the Constitution of Georgia," Georgia Today reported. 

Alongside the quota changes, bachelor's programmes nationwide are being shortened from four years to three, and master's programmes from two years to one. Critics say the compression is another signal of intent. "The real goal,"one analysis said, "is to turn students into cheap, exhausted workers as fast as possible, reducing the time and intellectual space young people have to organise," Euromaidan Press reported. 

Unlike most Georgian universities, which trace their lineage through Soviet academic structures, Ilia was built from the ground up on liberal arts principles; flexible curricula, research across disciplines, and a close integration of teaching and scholarship. Tamta Khalvashi, an anthropology professor there, described the institution's identity as inseparable from those values. "This university defined itself as a research oriented, interdisciplinary university," she said. "Its identity was built around liberal arts principles and flexible curricula, and this strong integration between teaching and research, which is integrated in every programme and in every discipline."

Khalvashi joined in 2018 and helped build its anthropology programme from scratch. She sees the reform not as modernisation but as something more deliberate. "The government has been increasingly using this narrative that this reform is based on the alleged market research," she said, "but the main message, if you read these reforms, is not what they say, but what they imply."

What they imply, she argued, is a narrowing of horizons. "They imply that this country will not offer high paying, creative or prestigious jobs. Because the government's vision focuses on a future which is built around low wage and low skilled jobs. And these jobs don't require even higher education at all."

The government has framed the overhaul as economically pragmatic, arguing that too many graduates were entering fields with poor employment prospects and that redistributing faculties between universities simply rationalises what already exists. Kobakhidze has said the cuts are intended to direct students toward understaffed sectors, which critics note are among the country's lowest paid.

The targeting of humanities and social sciences, in Khalvashi's view, is not incidental. "What this reform is trying to achieve is basically to restrict or to limit the possibility to think critically, to analyse, to engage critically and intellectually with the structures of power that govern you." Philosophy, sociology, political science, history — these are disciplines, she noted, that exist to scrutinise power rather than serve it. "In an environment where this government is centralising authority and becoming an illiberal state, of course, these abilities; the rational, intellectual capacity to question the grand narratives imposed by the state, are quite uncomfortable. That's the political goal, I would say, of this reform."

She described Ilia as "the last bastion" among Georgia's public institutions. "That's where academic freedom still exists. And of course, that's why Ilia is the last bastion right now among the state universities, which needs to be defended."

Protests swept Tbilisi throughout February. The nightly gatherings at the campus have become a form of collective mourning and resistance in equal measure. Marches have continued along Chavchavadze Avenue despite the legal risk, while others have organised outdoor sessions determined to show that the intellectual life the government is attempting to extinguish remains very much alive.

Khalvashi does not reach for easy optimism. "Hope is something that is very difficult to rely on right now because it's a feeling which is very slippery," she said. The anthropology programme she helped create may not survive in its current form. "But this grief is not the grief which I think is passing grief, grief which debilitates you," she said. "It's more grief which gives you more power to fight."

The university has pledged to challenge the decision through every available legal mechanism. Students have called on academic staff to refuse compliance with programme cancellations, and internationally recognised faculty have vowed to resist. Georgia's wider political context lends urgency to the struggle. EU and Nato integration are constitutionally enshrined and backed by an overwhelming majority of the population. Critics of Georgian Dream argue that the education reform is part of a broader project of democratic backsliding, a dismantling, degree by degree, of the institutions that produce citizens who think for themselves.