THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
In Italy, a Dysfunctional University System Sinks Deeper Into Decay Since 2008, Italian universities have seen their budgets slashed by 14 per cent By Megan Williams
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EduTech July 2012
by photos.com
A
t an outdoor cafe in a small, quaint piazza in historic Rome, Andrea Bordi gazes yearningly across the square at the University of Rome La Sapienza’s Faculty of Architecture, a rundown Baroque-era palazzo where he has spent much of his adult life. Since receiving his PhD from the faculty 15 years ago, Mr Bordi, an architect, worked first as an unpaid assistant and researcher until, five years ago, taking on a series of shortterm professor contracts, receiving anywhere from 300 euros a year to nothing. Like tens of thousands of other contract researchers and professors within the Italian university system, Mr Bordi hoped that all his free teaching and research would one day be rewarded with a full-time professorial position. His aspirations have been irrevocably dashed however, by the global recession and ensuing government reform efforts. Since 2008, Italian universities have seen their budgets slashed by 14 per cent. And in late 2010 the Italian government passed a law that drastically reduced the number of contract university workers, effectively laying off thousands of postdocs, assistants, researchers, and lecturers. The law also included a planned decrease in the number of full-time professors, associate professors, and researchers in the coming years from 58,000 to an estimated 40,000 by not replacing professors as they retire.
Dashed: The lofty beams of Italian universities hide the sad tale of broken dreams of thousands of university staff
Mr Bordi took to the roof of the nearby architecture building to protest with dozens of others from a network of activist researchers called the April 23 Network. But a year and a half later, he sits resigned to the reality that his lifelong dream of becoming a professor is dead. “It’s true that no one ever promised me I’d become a full-time professor,” he says, looking a tad self-conscious, “but it’s also true that the only way to become
a professor in Italy is to do what I did, work for years for next to nothing, hoping that you’ll be one of the lucky ones. And I wasn’t.” Mr Bordi’s bitter disappointment is shared by thousands of other academics. Ironically, their situation was made worse by the government’s 2010 plans to improve the system, known as the Gelmini reform, for then-education minister Mariastella Gelmini. The