The purpose of this article is to analyze a number of Greek higher education reforms in comparative perspective. Emphasis will be placed on the rationale of the state's policies in creating the nonuniversity sector within higher education. The case of Greece will be compared to the cases of France and Germany because approximately the same reforms took place for more or less the same reasons. The author's analysis will focus on the period from the late 1960s to the 1990s. It should be noted, however, that in both France and Germany the nonuniversity sectors were established within higher education during the 1960s and 1970s, while in Greece this occurred at the beginning of the 1980s. Since the Greek reforms were apparently "lagging behind" by ten or more years, the Greek reforms of the 1980s and 1990s will be initially compared to the reforms in France and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. The major similarities between the Greek and the French and German patterns of higher education reforms can be grouped in terms of the policy concepts of "equity" and "efficiency." These similarities can be reanalyzed and reinterpreted by taking into consideration the "semiperipherality" of Greece within Europe (and the world system more generally). (Contains 102 footnotes.)