The Gelmini reform implemented in Italy in 2010 was designed to ensure greater efficiency and effectiveness within the higher education (HE) sector. The reform was implemented in a climate of general austerity, which caused severe cuts in public funds for the university system. This paper documents the unintended consequences of the reform in…

This article aims to understand how the public higher education sector is dealing with new challenges, like sustainability in services provision and delivery, which means to fulfil all the functions of a university. In order to fulfil their mission and be sustainable, the public higher education sector should start an innovation process, through…

The evolution of Italian universities in terms of growth, economic sustainability and reforms can be interpreted in the light of the élite, mass and universal access categories defined by Martin Trow. The findings from this analysis show that although the number of enrolled students and funding problems propel the Italian university system towards…

To obtain a better understanding of country-specific policies, a country-specific literature review was undertaken. The search entailed key-terms focusing on relevance and the three higher education relevance dimensions. The main outcomes of the country-specific literature review are discussed in this chapter. We do so by analysing the typically…

In 2020, 1.5 billion students in 188 countries/economies were locked out of their schools. Students everywhere have been faced with schools that are open one day and closed the next, causing massive disruption to their learning. With the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic still raging, many education systems are still struggling, and the situation is…

This brochure focuses on a selection of indicators from "Education at a Glance," selected for their particular relevance in the current context. Their analysis enables the understanding of countries' response and potential impact from the COVID-19 containment measures. The following topics are discussed: (1) the impact of the crisis on…

This book critically examines the ramifications of reforms to higher education institutions. All of the higher education system reforms implemented in western countries over the last three decades have had one fundamentally important aim: namely, that of changing the existing institutional and system governance arrangements. This book argues that…

Purpose of the present research is an investigation of the most recent personnel reforms of higher education institutions in China and in Italy. A one-to-one comparison between the two realities would have been unrealistic, given the enormous differences between the two Countries in size and historical development. We focused our analysis on some…

This policy profile on education in Italy is part of the "Education Policy Outlook" series, which presents comparative analysis of education policies and reforms across The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Building on the OECD's substantial comparative and sectorial policy knowledge base, the…

Drawing inspiration from the research conducted in Italian schools involved in the reform process, the article proposes to investigate two visions in the research on Sociology of Education: one distal and the other proximal. The distal vision is offered by quantitative research nowadays supported by extensive public funding and framed as…

In education policy, as in many other policy fields, well-designed policy reforms may fail to get enacted because policymakers may suddenly become confronted with a public backlash against their reform agenda. Thus, understanding the dynamics of public opinion is important in order to be able to assess the chances of successful reform. There is a…

Since 2008, Italian universities have seen their budgets slashed by 14 percent. 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…

In the eyes of policy, the transformation of European education systems has become essential. Economically, education change is deemed vital to the successful emergence of knowledge economies. Politically, educational institutions and their cultures are seen as unhelpfully residual, providing a home to beliefs and practices that are not aligned…

How do Higher Education Institutions respond to steering attempts in different disciplines? How can different responses be explained? Case studies have been developed in the Italian Higher Education context and at the departmental level, with a focus on government interventions through funding and evaluation of research. The paper tests the…

It is argued that in the knowledge economy and in the context of the current restrictions on public finance, matching the output of higher education with the needs of the labour market is not simply one of many key issues for policy makers addressing the sustainability of higher education: it is "the" issue. As the sources of funding for…