The article attempts to analyze through a critical approach the changes taking place in the domain of public education systems when the financial conditions are reformed due to the capitalist crises and recession. Its basic aim is to examine the extent to which the size, the quality and the existence itself of the education provided by the state is influenced by these conditions. This study, which is based on the presentation of data concerning the extensive simultaneous shrinking of the state and education as in the case of Greece, concludes that this withdrawal of the state from the management of the social reproduction is not a temporary phenomenon but a more permanent one due to a structural transformation of capitalism. The essay predicts a rather bleak future whereby there will be fewer public educational institutions, whose terms of operation will be worse and the professional future of its graduates would correspond to clearly fewer working positions.