For too many years, Italian universities have been plagued by inefficiencies, underfunding, "baronage," and various forms of nepotism that prevent them from keeping pace with the times. Above all, they no longer seem capable of guaranteeing employment, profit, and adequate social advancement for young people.
This also explains the data provided annually by Eurostat, which shows Italy to be among the lowest in the European Union in terms of the latest generation of graduates. In Italy, in fact, approximately 31% of people between the ages of 25 and 34 have a university degree, compared to a European average of approximately 44%.
Of course, a degree isn't everything and can be the panacea for all of Italy's ills. This profound crisis in the university system, however, is resulting in the progressive cultural and professional impoverishment of our country.
It opens the door to a future where there will be fewer and fewer qualified and prepared Italians for elite jobs, and risks turning Italy into a reservoir of unskilled or poorly skilled and prepared labor—a workforce destined to be underpaid.
The debate over Italian universities, however, has for years revolved around just two issues: funding and rationalization of the system. But would more funding and fewer universities really be enough to solve the problems?
Luca Solari , professor of Business Organization at the University of Milan, in the volume " University without a Future " (Guerini e Associati, 2025, Euro 18.50, pp. 152. Also ebook) reverses the perspective and brings the gaze to the heart of the institution, where formal and informal organizational models generate fragile and not very dynamic balances, destined to perpetuate the limits of the system.
The university thus appears as the last vestige of the Ancien Régime : more resistant to change than even the Church and the Army. The result is an inertia that prevents the country from transforming its cultural, social, and economic fabric, condemning it to pursue the future instead of building it.
