This podcast basically comes in three flavours. In one, we interview authors of new and interesting books. In the second, we talk about current events in one country or another. And in the third, we talk about specific countries’ higher education systems and what makes them interesting and/or distinctive.
In the early days of the podcast, we used to do a lot more of number three, but we haven’t lately because, well, we managed to cover most of the world in the first couple of seasons. But there are still a couple of significant countries out there that we haven’t done yet, and one of them is Italy.
Italy obviously is the birthplace of the university. The first institution to go by that name was the University of Bologna, which was founded in 1088. But in recent times, things haven’t been so great in the Italian higher education sector. It spends less on higher education than most OECD countries, and the general economic sclerosis means that graduates often take a very long time to get their feet on the economic ladder.
With me to talk about the Italian system today is Katherine Isaacs. She was a professor of history at the University of Pisa and formerly served as vice-chair of the Bologna Follow-Up Group of the European Higher Education Area.
In our conversation today, we range over topics like how the Italian system is structured and funded, the extraordinary diversity of arts institutions in the country, the role of the state in academic careers, and also the surprising recent expansion of private higher education in the country.
I don’t want to spoil anything, so without further ado, ascoltiamo cosa ha da dire Katerina.
The World of Higher Education Podcast
Episode 5.7 | Inside Italian Higher Education: Excellence, Affordability and Change
Transcript
Alex Usher (AU): Kathy, can you explain the Italian system of higher education to us? What kinds of institutions are included in the system? How does it differ from systems in the rest of Europe?
Katherine Isaacs (KI): Well, let’s say the defining feature of the Italian system are the 61 public universities that go from mega generalist universities – like Rome, Bologna, Padua, Milan, Pisa, my own Naples – to medium and smaller institutions. And they cover almost all the regions and the major cities of the peninsula.
There are also 21 private universities and 11 online universities. But the higher education sector, the tertiary sector in general, also includes 164 AFAM institutions, and that is music conservatories and higher education in art and artistic disciplines.
AU: And, sorry, did you say 161?
KI: 164 AFAMs, yes, 72 conservatories. You know, Italy has a strong musical tradition, and there are conservatoires in most of the cities.
AU: Amazing.
KI: And there is also a new and expanding vocational level five sector, which in some definitions is included in higher education – the Istituti Tecnici Superiori. And there are 149 of these, and each one has a kind of constellation of institutions around it.
Italy is not only a partner but also a leader in the European higher education area and since 1999 its universities have had the same structures as the universities in the other 47 countries of the so-called Bologna area. That means we all have three cycles – first, second, and third, corresponding to bachelor, master, and doctoral degree – using ECTS, the European Credit System… Accumulation and Transfer System – belonging to the area of the Lisbon Recognition Convention, Italy since 2002, Canada I’ve seen from 2018.
And we all go by the ESG, that is the Standards and Guidelines for the Quality Assurance of European Higher Education Systems. Which means internal QA culture, institutional autonomy, learner-centered learning. In Italy, the in-presence universities have deep roots – medieval, even the year 1000, renaissance roots – tools, and traditions, and they have a strong focus on research and on linking research closely to learning.
So, they are conceived as universities for adults, not for children, and their quality is high consistently. The majority of learners are enrolled in institutions that rank in the first 500 worldwide. Maybe 500 doesn’t sound like 100, but look, the majority of institutions are highly ranked, and this is, I think, an important part of the profile of Italian higher education.
AU: Now, my impression is that Italy is kind of on the low end within the OECD in terms of, you know, public expenditures on higher education. Why is that? I mean, why isn’t it as high as, I don’t know, the UK or Canada? And what effects does that have on the system? How does that shape how the system is built and run?
KI: Well, let’s say… you’re right. Italy does spend… It’s not drastically less. It’s about 7% of its annual budget on education, and of that, about a fourth goes to higher education and research. Obviously, more expenditure would be nice, and we do sometimes have difficulties covering expenses that we usually took for granted.
Still, a lot of funding comes through research grants, and recently Italy has had a very large input of funds from the European Union’s Next Generation EU Framework Fund, and universities have used it to implement some very interesting and forward-looking initiatives. Some of the networks of highly ranked universities are offering free MOOCs.
And this will become problematic when the special funds end, and people do speak of a funding cliff and falling off it. But the government is trying to plan some special support to keep the innovative developments operative. Why is it? Well, Italy has a negative demographic situation and a lot of economic problems, including a huge debt.
AU: How centralized is control of the higher education system in Italy? I mean, in Europe you get a really wide range of approaches to this, right? There are countries where the ministry expects to be able to snap their fingers and universities will, you know, jump to attendance, and others where the universities are quite independent.
Where does Italy lie on that spectrum? What’s the role of the state in higher education?
KI: Well, I mean, this is an interesting question. I don’t know if I’d go totally along with you about there being so many universities where the ministry snaps its fingers. Maybe this was once so, but it certainly is not so in the current European higher education area.
I mean, it really has changed enormously in the past couple of decades. As far as Italy specifically goes, the main backbone of the system is state universities. This is true, and the university professors there are state employees. I myself have been a state employee for about 40 years in the system.
And 60 years ago, when I was a student, the major decisions did depend on the ministry. I mean, if you wanted to have another course, another curriculum, or maybe have an elective, you had to ask the ministry, and sooner or later, after X number of years, they might say yes, or they might say no. But this has changed radically before and particularly after the Declaration of Bologna in 1999.
And now, while the ministry does have important responsibilities for higher education -in fact, the ministry says which degrees are legally valid – universities have big areas of autonomy and self-government and responsibility, financial and otherwise. So, universities can even get into trouble if they don’t use their responsibilities widely.
They have to organize many key aspects of their operations, including how they use the budget and their internal quality assurance systems autonomously. And these are reviewed by the quality agency, and the ministry has to take into account what’s said by the agency. But it is not a command system.
AU: What about the state’s role in determining academic careers? So, my understanding is there have been a couple of revisions to the system in the past few months. One about changing rules with respect to how bibliometrics are used in academics careers or you know, hiring and promotion. And another one with respect to ensuring outside eyes on inside hires, in order to prevent academic nepotism. That is, having people from other universities on an institution’s own hiring panel. Can you tell us a little bit about this aspect of academic life and what the state’s role in it is?
KI: Well, yes, absolutely. Well, in the old days, let’s say, academics careers were on a national scale. This is because of the universities being one of the main tools in creating a nation state mentality, let’s say, from the 19th century on. And there was a single system of judgment, which was by the senior professors in whatever field was involved on the basis of one’s research production, and there was also a live test of their actual teaching abilities, which gave the right to a title called Libera Docenza, that is to be a free teacher within Italy. And well, what actually happened then is that people had to deal with this and slowly managed to go, maybe if they were good, from a peripheral university to a more central one, and maybe end up in one of the most famous -Bologna, Pisa, Padua, Rome – at the end of their career.
And this meant basically that everybody traveled a lot, and we all knew the train schedule by heart. Then later it was made possible to progress slowly in one’s own university. And obviously, this was an advantage because you didn’t have to move and take your family somewhere else, but it was also a disadvantage insofar as the problems you did mention of possible, let’s say, local influence became greater.
So, this law that was passed in July, the so-called Bernini Decree, in some ways goes back to the past because there is now – there will be, let’s say, a test on actual teaching abilities. And for the peers that judge on a promotion or on a first nomination to a chair are randomly selected, and there are five of them, and only one can come from the home university.
So, you can see that this is supposed to, let’s say, help to control any undue influence.
AU: Okay, that’s interesting. ‘Cause I guess that was becoming a rising problem. My understanding is there was quite a kerfuffle in Firenze, for instance, about this kind of inside hiring.
KI: Well, I mean, this, you know, in academia this is always a problem because your peers are the people that are most likely to be able to judge your quality. They may also be the people that are most likely to have some reason for not being totally, how to say correct in the… so this is always a balancing act. A good thing is that we go back to having some test of the capabilities I would now not say of teaching, but of facilitating learners in their learning.
AU: Got it. One other way, it seems to me, that Italy’s different from other OECD countries is that there’s been a persistent problem with graduate employment rates and low graduate salaries. I was reading something in one of the Italian papers recently about a comparison with Spain and how Spain has gotten so much better than Italy in terms of being able to provide jobs for young people in the last few years.
Do young people in Italy still see higher education as being a real paying proposition? And do low rates of return affect participation there?
KI: Well, I mean, do they? They certainly… I mean, as you say, the results are published on newspapers. I think it’s a little bit maybe misleading to think that the rates are so low. The OECD statistics and the ones from the Italian consortium, which is AlmaLaurea are based on different criteria, and they show different aspects of the situation.
I mean, the OECD focuses on the total of an age group to determine the employment and the higher education rate, whereas AlmaLaurea focuses on interviews with actual degree holders after one, three, and five years. And the economic situation in Italy, as no doubt you know or imagine, changes drastically according to the region, and the same is true of employment rates.
So, in general, graduates of northern and central universities do very well. The graduates from southern universities less well, unless they’re willing to emigrate to the north, which many do not want to do for family and tradition and other reasons. And unfortunately, many of our best graduates are tempted to go abroad, where they do get higher salaries.
And one statistic which is rather shaking, personally my own children, who both graduated from the University of Pisa are living and working in California. Guess what? So, half the young people who emigrate hold a university qualification, and this means that there’s a real brain drain.
However, I mean, in my own university, there are several… for example, in IT, 100% get a job immediately. Are the salaries lower? They’re a little lower, but on the other hand, the cost of living is also a little lower. I think, it’s people see more opportunity elsewhere, but I think most young people still think that the university is their potential way forward.
AU: Kathy, let us talk a little bit now about the private higher education system. Historically, it’s had some pretty big and prestigious institutions and I’m thinking of ones that excel, particularly in business, like Milan’s Bocconi and Rome’s LUISS.
But my understanding is that a lot of new entrants into this system of late. Who’s running all these new private universities?
KI: Well, I mean, this so-called private sector, which is not all private because some universities are actually run by autonomous regions in Italy, so they are public, although not the, the nation state. So, these would correspond more to, I guess, the public universities in Canada as a federal system.
But in any case there are now about 30 presence universities that are so-called private, and historically they have been dominated by these prestigious private universities, the Bocconi, Luiss, sponsored by industrialists or else often by the Catholic Church. And today there are several that are relatively new, largely in the field of medicine and healthcare.
And again, some, not all, are associated with the Catholic Church. But I have noticed that only six of these have been founded after 2000, and the most recent is in 2008. So, it’s not as though there’s some sort of a tidal wave flowing over Italy with lots of private institutions. This is not happening.
These higher education institutions, the so-called private ones, are allowed to charge more than the big public universities do, and fees in Italy are notoriously low because most of them are, at the maximum, are about 2,000 or 2,500 euros a year. There’s a cap on them, and there are many situations in which you pay much less or nothing.
Whereas the privates can go up, and they do go up in the 7 to 10 and sometimes higher thousands of euros area. And in some cases, they do give a possibility to people that weren’t able to enter, for example, medicine degrees in the public universities to have a place, naturally paying more than they would have in the public universities.
But I don’t see this as being a huge change or numerically extremely significant.
AU: Okay. Well maybe that’s just presential universities, ’cause I’m gonna ask you a question about online universities now. ‘Cause one of the oddities of Italy, and it’s really striking when you look at the numbers across the board, it’s one of the very few countries in the world, Brazil being the only other notable one, where participation in education among older individuals, so in their 30s and 40s, is rising significantly.
And it’s my understanding that this is almost 100% the result of private online universities finding new markets. Is that a fair description of what’s going on? And how do people feel about this? ‘Cause expanding private education is not always seen positively, right? Like Spain and France are having huge issues with this right now.
How do people in Italy see this expansion of private online universities?
KI: Well, I mean, I’m not so sure that I agree with you that this is a phenomenon that seems more visible now. For example, we see publicity on the television, which is striking because that’s something new. We never saw people saying, “Oh, look, enroll in this telematic university and you will be able to get your degree only paying so much a month,” and so on and so forth.
And it is true that older individuals are enrolling more frequently, and often this happens, but not always… definitely not always in the online universities.
I think there are many drivers. I mean, the convenience for people who don’t live where there is an in presence university is certainly one of them. Public employees have been important or are important as a clientele of online universities because they can either enroll in a full degree program or use credits that they already have to build a credential that can improve their chances of promotion.
And some enrol in social sciences and education programs with the idea of being able to achieve a higher position in their activity, whatever it is, in coordinating staff or managing. And then there are a lot, and this is as far as I know statistically well founded, that many, many older people find a time that in their life that they want to do something they’ve always wanted to do — philosophy, Italian, art, history — and go to the in presence universities normally.
There was since ’99, an online university for Italian culture for people living outside Italy. It still exists and it is run by a big consortium of the major in presence universities. So, I mean, there’s not this, you know, sharp dividing line. Online is bad and in presence is all in presence. It’s much more fluid.
AU: Well, that’s interesting, ’cause I know in some parts of Europe there are some real quality assurance concerns about online education. Spain just recently put forward some pretty significant limits on online education, although I don’t know if that’ll survive the election that was just called there. We’ll see.
How confident are Italians that these institutions are on the level? Is there a worry about lower quality provision, I guess?
KI: What to say? I think that I don’t think it’s possible to define a general attitude of Italians. My impression is that Italians are cautious about this. There was a scandal recently with the Pegasus Online University. However, I mean, that was resolved and the direction, the ownership of the whole thing is now changed, and the basic rules for the online institutions have changed because they now have to have in-presence exams and largely oral exams, which is what is the Italian tradition, and that’s something we might want to develop because that is a way that you really know whether that person knows and is able to use the knowledge and the competencies that they’ve developed or not, because they’re in front of you and you can talk to them.
AU: And that’s, effectively what Spain is asking to impose on…
KI: Yeah, but that’s not in their tradition. Their tradition is written exams, whereas the Italian tradition is oral exams, which are coming to the fore now in the presence of AI because well, because it’s one of the only ways you really know what the person knows especially if they’re not wearing their glasses.
In any case now this Pegasus university, like the other 10 online officially recognized Italian universities, is quality assured competently by ANVUR, which is the National Quality Assurance Agency that’s responsible for the QA of all the in presence higher education institutions.
Interestingly, the highest rated online university, which is called UniNettuno, is an old one, and it’s rated as one of the first 10 in Europe. And so, I think that rightly, Italians are reasonably confident that the online universities are watched over, especially now. And it’s nothing like the Wild West situations that I have seen in some countries, where they’re popping up all over and really fraudulent.
AU: What’s the best news story or best kept secret about higher education in Italy that people outside the country need to know about?
KI: I think the best … the little known secret probably is that it’s a very high quality system, and this is the philosophy but also the reality of it, that is not to have a few extremely highly quoted campuses and a lot of low-level institutions. It’s all on a very high level. Even the ones that don’t make it into the international rankings, it’s usually because they’re small and are below the radar of Shanghai or Times or whatever.
And I think another thing that people may not know, well maybe they do, maybe they don’t, is that the tuition is not expensive. There can be a problem in living expenses because particularly in the big cities, but also in some medium university cities such as Pisa it’s hard to find cheap accommodation. Nonetheless, it costs so vastly less than other quality institutions in other parts of the world that it’s worth considering, particularly because there are a lot of English language courses now available.
And for those who don’t want to do it that way there are also the foundation programs. University of Pisa started this in 2016. So, there’s a one-year foundation program that allows people that have had less secondary instruction, 11 years instead of 12 as in Italy, to make up the year and learn Italian and be able to access these various programs.
Is that a secret? I don’t know. But it seems to me like it’s a good reason to consider coming to Italy, and, well, guess what? We have a lot of foreign students.
AU: If you look forward maybe 20 years, how do you see Italian higher education evolving? Like, what’s the best case scenario for Italy in 2046?
KI: I hope that it will continue to follow what I consider the right approach to higher education and in fact education in general, which is a public offer of affordable higher education for grown-ups linked to research and following its approach to excellence. I mean, oral exams, real research for theses papers, doctoral dissertations and so forth. And I’m sure it will continue its close engagement with the European higher education area and the positive connection that it is building and continues to build with other world regions.
I think that the trend towards more programs in English and more online opportunities, including those from traditional universities, will continue.
My general idea is that higher education will become more flexible. This is what is happening. It’s what has to happen because people have to be able to access education lifelong or life-wide, as UNESCO says. This is happening, and I’m happy to see that Italian universities have understood this, at least in part, and are creating the premises to be part of that future world.
I also hope, naturally, that in 20 years the current world atmosphere of impending doom, crisis, political, military, humanitarian, climate, will have taken a different direction, and that quality in higher education and education in general will be offered to and taken up by more members of society in Italy and worldwide.
AU: Kathy, thanks so much for joining us today.
KI: Well, thank you for giving me this opportunity.
AU: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek, Noah Arney, and you, our listeners and readers, for joining us. If you have any questions or comments about this week’s episode or suggestions for future ones, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com.
Next week is a break week, but we’ll be back in two weeks time when our guest will be Elizabeth Balbachevsky. She’s an associate professor of political science at the Universidade de São Paulo, and she’ll be joining me to talk about the results of the Brazilian presidential election and its likely implications for higher education in that country. Bye for now.
*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.
