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Italy plagued by Mafia-style universities Italy's corrupt university system has infected the whole country and is now stone dead, according to Marcello Pera. That was back in 1995 and Pera, himself a university professor, has since become president of the Italian Senate. Unfortunately the Italian university system appears to have made no similar progress Even though distinguished colleagues say I shouldn’t, I still say that these rigged university competitive examinations are scandalous. It is not that I am unaware that where there is a system of co-optation there is also the risk of nepotism and corruption. Nor is it that I do not know that in a scientific community the boundary between college and clientelism is often rather elastic. It is because, rigged public examinations aside, the university is itself a scandal. To call it thus is already incorrect. Our university system is more properly a Soviet academy of sciences whose sole function is that of reproducing its own members (through public examinations), thus granting them a sufficiently comfortable life (56 million lire a month for full professors who retire at 77 after receiving five years’ free salary with no teaching duties), depriving them of any work that is not bureaucratic and, above all, allowing them to work little, very little. A few years ago a precious little book by a courageous teacher, Raffaele Simone, entitled “University of the Three Betrayals” (Laterza, 1993) caused a stir. Basically, Simone furnished documentary evidence to show that our university system betrays its students, who “receive a fourth-order teaching service”, betrays research, which is “at too low a level for our system not to be defined fallacious”, and betrays society because it constitutes a “permanent violation of the public service”. As in a true corporative Soviet structure where no criticism of the system is permitted, or in a Mafia “cosca” clan where anyone who challenges the rules pays for the “affront”, Simone himself landed in trouble and was himself accused of being a traitor. But he was right. That the blame lies at source, namely within the regime, and not with a few nepotistic or corrupt professors, may be understood by comparing our own Soviet-style system with foreign university systems. Do you know when they start teaching abroad? In America at the end of August or earlier, in Great Britain in September; throughout the rest of the civilised world lectures have already begun by October. In Italy it is officially from November 6 and in practice even later since no one ever keeps a check. You might say that perhaps we finish later. Well then, do you know how many hours an Italian professor’s course lasts? Fifty. Yes sir: everywhere else it is 200-250 hours but in Italy 50 hours a year (a year) are enough to keep the show running. Do not allow yourself to be taken in by stories about preparation of lectures, hours of reception, meetings, publications, etc. It is still just fifty hours in class and the course is valid. I there are some who work a bit more. But that is entirely up to them – the law (note: Italian law) requires no more than this. For the rest, it obliges you to sign farcical false documentation in a register (!) which attests that one has spent 350 hours in the university. By the way, how many courses does an Italian professor teach? For goodness sake, he only teaches one since he is appointed to just one subject; he cannot teach and is not required to teach any others. Abroad they teach an average of three (related but different subjects) and these are distributed over at least two periods or “terms”: one does the first “term” and then the exams, one does the second term and then the exams and then comes summer when one has to work really hard in order to publish (because, as they say, “publish or perish” – write or else you will be put in a corner or else sacked). You might also say: but we also have terms now, at least in some universities. Well, do you know how our terms or semesters work? This is how they work: you start in November, you go on (“intensively”, they say) until February (including holidays), then, after the momentous fifty hours, you stop and then start again in November. If, however, you decide to change semesters, you finish in February and begin again in march of the following year. That is how things work from Catania to Milan (inclusive). Semester, in Italian, means two-and-a-half months. Convenient, isn’t it? We could get ourselves even more worked up by listing the “legal” value of a degree, degrees that are gifted, our doctorates that are set up and then abandoned, our researchers for life, low university fees, nonexistent services, non-computerised libraries, administrative staff who work about as much as teaching staff, and so on. The result is that we have a university system that is Third World (international organisations say this) and masses of students who are abandoned and frustrated, especially, as often happens, when they are bright. Can anything be done? No. And even less can be done if we waste time on the false problem of scandals in competitive exams for tenured posts. The Italian university no longer exists. It is dead. It has been killed by a political class that is irresponsible, guilty, short-sighted, homicidal and suicidal, composed (look at the parliaments of the First Republic and the Ciampi and Dini governments) especially of university professors. To ask this political class to provide a remedy for the cemetery it has left behind is like asking Totò Riina to solve the Mafia problem. Note: This article was first published in English by JUST Response on 18 August 2003. It originally appeared in the Italian centre-right magazine Panorama under the title “Università corrotta, nazione infetta” on 9 November 1995. We express our grateful acknowledgement to Panorama. Marcello Pera is a member of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party and a professor of philosophy at the University of Pisa. He has been president of the Italian Senate since May 30 2001.
See also: The Domenico Pacitti Archive
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