WORK|OUT European Students’ Review

REFORM (AND RUIN) OF THE UNIVERSITY

An “in itinere” verification of the structural university reforms in Italy in the course of the Bologna Process

   | Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri (Roma). During the last ten years Italian university life has experienced deep changes, the most visible part going under the name of “Reform of the University”. It means, above all, a worsening, in quality at least, of one of the services traditionally given to the university system: training and culture offered to the students. Reforms include: the move from long cycles to short cycles; the flattening of all disciplines so that workloads are the same for the students; more tightly packed exam sessions and time for evaluation; the loss of each teacher’s identification with a particular subject; the encouragement of non-attending students; the elimination of theses, all changes which will happen at least for the basic degrees.
   [...] We are going to talk about the damage, which past governments are responsible for, and the delegated decree, currently being debated in Parliament, that is going to bring worse. [...]
   The main reason for substituting the old degree with the current two, which run consecutively (basic and specialist), is to make it easier for students to finish university, reducing the swarms of those who fail to complete their course within the allotted time.
   First statistics show that this has not been achieved, and a very high percentage of latecomers is now forming. However, with the basic degree shorter than the older one, the University ends up being an easier obstacle to get over. Eliminating a quarter of the knowledge to be acquired, and “aiming” the rest at professional applications, the move from the pragmatic period of studying to that, truly coveted, of work, is facilitated.
   Only students who want to learn more about their subject go on to do the specialist degree, and so the number of people going on to graduate will be greater than those who could do it through the old degree. But the number of people learning what can be learned will go down. More young people will know less. [...]
   It is evident that people who have completed more professional studies will get the best results in work. Higher degrees of knowledge mean better results. They say that for this purpose there are specialist degrees: people who want to know more can do a five year degree (including a thesis) instead of the old four years. Can we really say that after five years (three plus two) the student will know more than through the old four-year degree?
   Unfortunately, we can’t. It is for this reason that the “quantitative” mentality that governs the short degree institution also has repercussions on means of access to the specialist degree. The important thing is: to let as many people as possible graduate. Less selective admission criteria are thus adopted. Getting a lot of students is the main ambition of every course of study; getting fewer amounts to a death sentence. This is due to the growing trend in financing courses on the basis, firstly, of the number of students that enrol and then of those who graduate. It’s not wrong to give more resources to people who incur higher costs, but this doesn’t have to become the only criteria. [...] anyone enrolled on a specialist degree won’t continue from where he left off but will find a training offer that partially repeats what he has already studied. Many specialist degrees are largely assembled through a collage of the same courses given in the basic degrees, in part due to the number of professors not being increased to cover the necessary higher number of courses, and.
   For all of these reasons, from now on, three plus two years will be needed to do what previously could have been done in four. [...] But this is an optimistic view of things, because, even if it’s done well, fragmentation brings obstruction and a logistic waste of time. [...]

| This article is an excerpt from Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri’s essay “Riforma (e rovina) dell’università”, published by Il Mulino, n. 413 — anno LIII, n. 3, maggio-giugno 2004, Bologna; translation by Luca Acquarelli. E. Lombardi Vallauri is Associated Professor of Linguistics at the University of Rome 3.