THE ITALIAN EDUCATION PROFILE

Economic and political backgroundUntil April 1996 the Ministry of Education (MPI) and the Ministry for Universities, Scientific and Technological Research (MURST - created eight years previously) were separated entities, but under the new cabinet appointments of Prodi's Government (April 1996), Luigi Berlinguer, a professor of law and ex-Rector of the University of Siena and member of the left-wing PDS, became Minister for Education and Research, echoing a similar merger which took place in Germany two years previously. The new Government led by Massimo D'Alema (October 1998) split the ministries again, with Berlinguer remaining in the cabinet but heading only the MPI. Ortensio Zecchino, a lawyer and a member of the PPI, was appointed the new minister of MURST. The present Government led by Giuliano Amato (April 2000) has reconfirmed Zecchino's position, but the MPI has a new Minister, Tullio De Mauro. He is one of the most important scholars of the Italian language and was a member of Berlinguer's commission for school reform.Specific LegislationThe Constitution of the Republic of Italy in 1947 established the principle that "art and science are free and the teaching of them is free".Brief post-secondary training courses have their juridical foundation in law 845 of 1978 which entrusts the management of professional training courses to local offices, professional associations and labour unions.Non-university institutes of higher education have been instituted by individual decrees that determine the number of courses and type of teaching, and their administrative autonomy is reconfirmed in part by Presidential Decree no. 416 of 1974.Higher education in universities has, however, gone through a more complex series of stages the main ones being:
Law no. 168 of 9 May 1989 resulting in the institution of MURST to enlarge the organisational, didactic and financial autonomy of universities;
Law no. 341 of 19 November 1990 which reformed the structure of university teaching by introducing the University Diploma of first level (diploma universitario di primo livello)
Law no. 127 of 15 May 1997 which sanctioned universities full teaching autonomy, entrusting them the power and responsibility for defining methods of study, but still within centrally defined outlines. Other regulations concerned the planning of the university system i.e., the decongestion of the more crowded universities to improve the quality of teaching and services offered to students.
Law no. 210 of 3 July 1998 established new rules about the recruitment of university teachers with tenure and researchers.FundingEuropean Union nations in 1995 spent an average of 5.2 percent of the GDP to educate students from the elementary through the university level*. Nations in northern Europe spent the most on their students, Sweden earmarked 7.8 percent of its GDP, while countries in the south were the least generous with Greece in last place for spending only 2.9 percent. Italy was in the middle, dedicating 4.7 percent of GDP to education. However, it dropped to the bottom of the list for the amount given for merit scholarships, which represented only 1.2 percent of the total amount spent on education. The only nation below Italy was Greece at 0.4 percent, while Denmark allocated 16.4 percent of its education budget to scholarships.The largest share of Italian education spending, 73 percent, went for personnel salaries. In 1995, the last data available, the average cost per student was 3,324 European currency units (ECU), 4,975 ECU in Italy, for the years of compulsory education and 6,249 ECU for the university level, 4,751 ECU in Italy