Science Schools? Italy scrambling to patch up

Published: 2007 - November, Dossier

How many students can you find in science schools in Italy? Well, just a bit more than spaghetti in sushi. Meaning, almost none. This is the sad and alarming news, the result of a study conducted a couple of years ago by the European Union. A report that in a way provided answers to two additional fundamental questions: why has Italy fallen so far behind on heavy industrialization; and, especially, why should Italian companies be forced to hire technical personnel, specifically engineers, from other Euro-area countries? Until five years ago, the situation had appeared beyond hope. But things have begun to change in Italy – at least in matters related to schools of engineering (in all their specific branches), medicine, pharmacy, mathematics and physics. Thanks to an impressive campaign of incentives offered by the Ministry of Universities and Research, such ‘unfashionable’ schools as cited above have regained their appeal, which had appeared lost forever. Be it due to the fact that humanistic degrees, usually earned in 3-year courses, no longer assure graduates of a decent job and salary, or that companies, research institutes and multinational corporations now look for top-of-the-class graduates from technical-scientific schools, the rate of enrollments has drastically shifted in the last three years towards scientific courses.
The European warning called to attention the all-Italian generations-old fixation on marketing, communications and para-humanistic disciplines in order to challenge the country to get hold of the reins of its own development. A good spanking, served by Brussels, that has produced immediate results, demonstrated in the rising number of enrollments in science courses. A reaction that has offered, finally, a reason to be proud for a nation which until the 1960s-1970s had been a technological bridgehead, a pioneer in the field of science.
Examining data, limited to the University of Padua, one of the oldest academic institutions in the world, we discover in 2006 a sharp rise in new enrollments, following years of decline that has plagued all universities offering courses of ‘classic’ sciences – mathematics, physics and chemistry. To encourage students to enroll in science courses, almost all the universities have started a campaign of financial incentives, offering students to pay only 2-year tuition for 3-year degree programs. But the most noteworthy data, pretty amazing in a way, are those related to the number of student candidates last year. The first is the number of candidates for the 17 medical-related courses at the various schools of medicine – a booming 3,004 which is testimony to the growing appeal of these 3-year programs. The second is the number of candidates who participated in admission tests for the 4-year primary teacher training programs, with 1,150 competing for 305 student positions, a sensational boom considering that in the previous year the number was only 710. Admission tests are managed nationally by the Ministry. There were similarly notable numbers of candidates in 2006 trying to get into programs of economics (810), psychology (1,842), less in the inter-faculty course of medical biotechnology (249), very encouraging the number for the new degree program of teachers for infants and pre-adolescents (290 for 136 positions).
The University of Padua continues to offer incentives to encourage students to enroll in ‘classic’ science courses – mathematics, physics, chemistry – and the more recent addition, materials science, at its Faculty of Sciences. It formally offers a refund, after the completion of the first year of studies, of tuition fees; practically meaning a student attends the second-year course for free, and gets to pay tuition only for two out of the three year Bachelor degree program. The only condition is that the student comply with the credit-earning plan and attendance requirements. This initiative was adopted by the University of Padua just as it has by other Italian universities in order to help overcome the crisis in science degree programs, where for a decade there has been a declining number of enrollments – but where last year there was a 17% increase.