The situation in our universities is paradoxical. Students and professors are protesting against a reform that exists, the minister, worried by the protests, it is decided to explain what he intends to do to reform the universities. The only certainty is that in the coming months will be held competitions for 2,000 new research posts and 4,000 posts of lecturer and associate professor, who will follow, soon, another 1,000 research posts. In all 7,000 seats, more than ten percent of the teachers role today.
The professor will be 4,000 seats just promotions of people who are in college. The promotions will take place under the old rules, that is, with mock competitions. It 'absolutely useless to a young researcher who received his doctorate in Chicago or face Heidelberg question of each competition already you know the winner. The 3000 competition for research will ensure a place for life to as many students complain that their precarious condition. In all the universities in the world at some point you get a place in life, but this is only after repeatedly demonstrated to be able to achieve results in the search.
Here instead asks the stabilization by decree without even having to have a doctorate. The minister has inherited from its predecessor, and these competitions do not seem to have the strength to change them and assign seats based on merit rather than loyalty. Students seem to ignore this and not understand the importance of stringent selection mechanisms, without which the university who go to sell stories. As teachers, good, good, quiet, quiet. If these contests will succeed any discussion of university reform will henceforth vain for ten years there will be no place for anyone and our best students will not go any other way that migration.
The Finance Act has cut funds to the university that is significant but not dramatic: on average 3% per year (1.4 billion over 5 years at a total cost of about $ 10 billion per year). You start by cutting nearly zero in 2009, and then the reductions will become gradually increasing to reach the average of 3% in 'a period of five years. The cut is not terrible, even considering Rectors' Conference that it is recognized that in Italy the expenditure per pupil is higher than in France and Great Britain. However, finding resources is always possible, for example, you may cancel the rules on 'retirement age approved by the Prodi government, return to the Maroni law and to invest the saved money in research and universities. Nor do I seem obscene to charge higher tuition fees to rich families and use the proceeds to partially offset the cuts, in part to finance scholarships for the poorest.
Roberto Perotti explains in a book that anyone who deals with the University should read ("The university made up ', Einaudi, 2008) same for all taxes are a way to transfer income from poor to rich. The survey data on the families of the Bank of Italy, quoted by Perotti, shows that 24% of university students come from the richest 20% of households; only 8% come from the poorest 20%. In the South, the disparity is even wider: 28% vs. 4%. Minister Gelmini argues that his model is Barack Obama, perhaps the Minister does not know how much it costs to send her son an American family in a good university. In one of the best, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, frequency, costs $ 50,100 per year (40,000 €), but 64% of students attending the first level of graduate receives a scholarship.
Francesco Giavazzi
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