Abstract
Higher education policies between 1987 and 1996 have represented a significant discontinuity with regard to the experience of previous decades, in terms of both content and methods. A Ministry for Higher Education was established, and a new autonomistic policy was launched. Furthermore, the 1993 Budgetary Law set in motion a process of financial and staffing responsibilization of universities, and de facto established their institutional accountability. However, in spite of the significant innovations introduced, such adverse conditions as the persistence of a deep-rooted conception of academic functions, limited ministerial expertise, and the absence of governance strategies and capacities at the institutional level, rendered implementation of legislative provisions difficult and uncertain.
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Notes
- 1.
In previous decades, Italian universities had seen an exponential growth in the numbers of enrolled students, which between 1960 and 1990 increased from 270,000 to 1,300,000 (see Appendix). But, as we saw in Chap. 4, the attempt to accompany the process with overall reforms of universities (including structural differentiation of academic programmes) was abandoned, as a result of which both system and institutional governance remained largely unchanged.
- 2.
Express consent to an assignment was only required for lecturers already in service (who therefore possessed ‘entitlement’).
- 3.
The CUN therefore confirmed its central role in tempering and orientating the governance function of the Ministry which, while remaining the sole decision-maker, was obliged to seek the opinion of a consultative body representing the various subject areas (this opinion was binding on questions of academic programmes).
- 4.
Following the first two plans (the one for 1982–1986 and the one for 1986–1990), this new measure simplified the procedures to be followed for approval of the plan, which subsequently became triennial.
- 5.
The ‘short cycle’ introduced by the law on the reform of academic curricula was never to take off to any quantitatively significant extent. It was intended to prevent the ‘mass’ universities from having the majority of their students follow excessively long courses, as had been the case with the traditional single-cycle degree (which was already too long in terms of its ‘legal’ duration, and even longer in terms of its actual duration, because almost no student graduated within the allotted time). In reality, the law failed to determine the identity and position of the short cycle within the framework of the HE system, and although such had been foreseen by legislation, the links between the new diplomas and single degrees proved difficult (Luzzatto and Saccani 1997). Similarly, the autonomy to design the curricula granted to universities by the law was quickly constrained by ministerial regulations which instead of simply establishing the requisite disciplinary areas went as far as imposing compulsory courses, and in ensuring the national uniformity of degree programmes, in part on the urging of the CUN (which issues a binding opinion).
- 6.
An important role was played by the Treasury Ministry’s Technical Commission on Public Spending, which in 1992 began (Giarda 1992; Catalano and Silvestri 1993) to review the costs and productivity of universities based on data for each university, and to produce proposals that included the creation of a single fund that incorporated all funding items to be allocated to universities on an annual basis (this was the mechanism that was later adopted by the 1993 Law).
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Capano, G., Regini, M., Turri, M. (2016). Autonomy and Funding: The Reforms of the Late 1980s to the Mid-1990s. In: Changing Governance in Universities. Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54817-7_5
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