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Science 10 December 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6010 pp. 1462-1463 DOI: 10.1126/science.330.6010.1462-a

* News of the Week

Italian Universities Italian Universities Italian Parliament Passes Controversial University Reforms

1. Edwin Cartlidge*

The latest attempt to reform Italy's archaic university system passed an important milestone last week when the Italian Parliament's lower house approved a proposed law aimed at eliminating nepotism in academic appointments as well as improving the quality of teaching and research. The reforms must still be given a final approval by the Italian Senate, however, and it is possible, although unlikely, that the bill will be abandoned following a no-confidence vote on the center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi on 14 December.

The reforms have been contested by much of Italy's university community. Over the past few weeks, students and researchers have mounted protests up and down the country, ones that have seen university departments occupied, famous landmarks scaled by protesters, traffic blocked, and clashes with police on the streets of Rome and elsewhere. The protesters say the reforms will cut universities' already very limited funding, deprive researchers of promotion, and reduce academics' autonomy. But even among the detractors there are many who welcome a part of the reform that would set up a new system to distribute research funding according to international standards of peer review.

Many acknowledge that Italy's university system is badly in need of an overhaul. Promotions and funding are often awarded on the basis of connections rather than merit, providing mediocre and unproductive professors with jobs for life while pushing many of the country's brightest minds abroad. The reforms, some 2 years in the making, were drawn up by Education and Research Minister Mariastella Gelmini and would set up nationwide standards for academic recruitment, transfer some governance powers from academics to administrators, and trim the huge number of courses that universities teach. Enrico Decleva, rector of the University of Milan and president of the Italian rectors' conference, says that it “presents solutions that should improve universities.”

One of the popular reforms proposes that the roughly €800 million in research grants allocated each year by the ministries of education and health should instead be handed out by panels of independent experts, 30% of whom would be non-Italians. Ignazio Marino, an opposition senator who added this to Gelmini's plans as an amendment, says that this brings Italy into line with most developed countries, adding that it is a vital step if research funding is to be allocated on the basis of merit and not as a favor to a friend. Yet most funding for Italy's researchers will still come in the form of block grants from the government, and these allocations rarely go through a peer-review process.

Critics of the overall university reforms are unhappy about a lack of new money in the plans; with universities facing a budget shortfall of about €300 million in 2011. There has also been opposition to the plan for a new tenure-track process in which, after a maximum of 8 years, a postdoctoral researcher must either gain promotion to associate professor or leave the university where they have been doing research. The government says the change should limit a university's ability to simply appoint whomever they like, because it will impose minimum quality requirements on promotion candidates. But existing permanent researchers say the new system is unfair because it will place little weight on experience.

Opponents to Italian university reform, like these students in Rome, fear a reduction in funds and autonomy. CREDIT: TONY GENTILE/REUTERS/LANDOV

Physicist Giovanni Amelino-Camelia of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” also believes that the new tenure track could stifle original research because postdocs will be tempted to follow the research interests of the professors who would promote them rather than what is most scientifically interesting. “In the U.S. or the U.K., the possibility of promotion enhances the quality of research, but here it will have the opposite effect,” he predicts.

Assuming the reform plan is approved by the Senate in the coming weeks as expected, it would still face further hurdles. According to Renzo Rubele, an Italian physicist at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, lawmakers would still need to work out a vast number of sublaws and bylaws, a process that could last up to 2 years. He says that a previous attempt at university reform in 2005, by then-research minister Letizia Moratti, came unstuck when this work was not completed.

Caro Maurizio,

Sono con te nel speluccare l'ultimo panettone, orrendamente baronale, pensando anche, by the way, che questa e' stata l'ultima

tredicesima. Come sono (tristemente) d'accordo! Non ci resta che piangere o, appunto, forse meglio, mandare tutti a quel paese.

Nulla, come l'idiozia umana, da' il senso dell'infinito.

Buon panettone, Maurizio.

Saluti,

MAURO On 18/dic/10, at 16:49, Maurizio Tirassa wrote:

At 16.30 +0100 18.12.2010, claudio procesi wrote:

...

per vostra informazione, questo e` l'articolo su science

Va bene, abbiamo torto marcio. Siamo nepotisti inefficienti e corrotti, non abbiamo alcuna capacità scientifica e abbiamo fatto carriera solo perché avevamo conoscenze. Non scrivo "quelli che l'hanno fatta, la carriera" perché l'abbiamo fatta tutti, visto che le Università finora hanno promosso tutti e chiunque.

Ma per fortuna, con ben tre giorni di anticipo sul Natale (d'altronde: è o non è il governo del fare?), Gesù Bambino renderà l'università italiana più bella e più grande che pria. Ce lo assicurano un sacco di scienziati che dall'estero guardano con commiserazione a noi poveri imbecilli che siamo rimasti - perché eravamo troppo scadenti per andarcene, sia chiaro! noi inoccupabili, come ha detto Martino - e con speranzosa ammirazione al nobile tentativo dell'Avv. Gelmini di portare finalmente un po' di onestà e di sana etica del lavoro in questa spelonca di ladri, dementi e portaborse che è l'università di noi baroni.

Basta, speriamo almeno che dopo questa cazzo di riforma la finiscano con il mobbing. Piazzino i loro politicanti trombati nei CDA, stronchino la carriera ai giovani con la tenure track al sapore di vongola, ci taglino lo stipendio, facciano quel che vogliono ma ci lascino un po' in pace con il nostro baronale panettone. L'ultimo che mangeremo, spero.

E quando i miei studenti vengono a chiedermi cosa fare del loro futuro io dovrei suggerire che restino? dovrei invitarli a dare il meglio di sé perché la nazione finalmente - non com'è accaduto finora - riconoscerà i loro meriti? perché la nazione finalmente grazie alla riforma Gelmini (l'unico difetto della quale è semmai di non fare pulizia fino in fondo) ha deciso di trasformarsi in una società basata sulla conoscenza?

Fanculo, va'. Spero che i ventenni brucino le città fino in fondo, prima di salire sull'aereo che li porterà lontano da questa fogna.

Maurizio _______________________________________________ Universitas_in_trasformazione@mail.dm.unipi.it mailing list

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Prof. Mauro C. Beltrametti Dipartimento di Matematica Universita' di Genova Via Dodecaneso, 35 16146 Genova Italy beltrametti@dima.unige.it