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Bolognese
flavoured corruption
By
Domenico Pacitti
Higher education minister Luigi
Berlinguer's statement that Italy's universities have "no
tradition of evaluation" raises the uncomfortable question of
how tenured posts are allocated in Italy if not on merit. It also
ultimately undermines the very idea of a credible Italian
university.
Professor Berlinguer is making much of his recently approved laws
to reform the concorso system - the competitive state examination
by which appointments to professorial posts are made. But
Salvatore Sorriso, chairman of the largest trade union for
university professors, who is completing a three-volume
documentation of concorso fiddling, is one of many who have
already condemned the reform as "a step 20 years back in
time".
In future, associate and full professorship concorsi are to be
conducted locally with enormous powers of veto bestowed on the
faculty - in the same fashion as researcher concorsi,
traditionally the most corrupt and easiest to fiddle.
Bureaucracy reigns supreme. Back in December 1995, 3,491 associate
professor posts covering 357 disciplines were advertised in the
official gazette. Thirteen of these posts were in English
linguistics, where a nine-strong commission shortlisted 17 of the
original 125 applicants for the examination, which eventually took
place in Bologna at the end of May. The statutory two-part exam
required each candidate to discuss his or her publications with
the commission and, on selecting a sealed envelope containing a
title, to prepare within 24 hours an actual lesson to be delivered
in English.
Despite having been shortlisted, I failed to be appointed.
Colleagues and neutral observers never seriously felt my academic
qualifications - eight published books and 20 years' university
teaching experience of English, linguistics, American literature
and Chinese - had been taken into consideration. It is common
knowledge that the exam is simply a recital and that the places
have already been decided many months and even years in advance,
although no commission will ever admit this. The decision is final
and not open to appeal.
The official judgements are sent to the ministry and then to the
National Universities' Council for formal approval, which they
invariably obtain. Even the most patently absurd decisions can be
ratified, provided the commission is unanimous and no formal
errors have been made, such as physical failure to leave the door
open or to reinsert the questions correctly into their respective
envelopes.
Predictably, the successful candidates, almost all Italians,
turned out to have ties with individual examiners and faculties
with vacant posts. It came as no surprise that my books had not
been read nor had my arguments been understood or listened to with
much interest.
My examiners were hardly inspiring: those Italian speakers whom I
had the chance to listen to had a poorer level of English than
many of my students, while the English speakers had lost their
linguistic 'freshness' after long years spent in a foreign
country, although they had clearly acquired the Italian
corporative power group mentality.
These impressions were shared by David Petrie, chairman of the
Committee for the Defence of Foreign Lecturers, who had been asked
to investigate following a number of angry complaints by highly
qualified members of his trade union, who had not been
shortlisted.
Our uncustomary decision to exercise our rights and sit in on some
exams caused the commission visible irritation. We heard one
successful, Italian candidate change the title of the lesson
assigned to her so that she could talk about her own research, and
saw another, far more competent but unsuccessful, British
candidate treated very unfairly.
Books, such as Hands On The University by Felice Froio, have
recently been written documenting Cathedropolis, as the Italian
press has christened the fiddling of concorsi. Examples abound of
entire commissions and even faculties placed under arrest and led
away in handcuffs following recordings of their deliberations,
candidates sure of winning well in advance who submitted a
last-minute plagiarised book or two just to keep the written
records right, jobs for the chairman's lover, the rector's
brothers and sisters, the baron's protected pupils, forged
signatures - the list is neverending.
The total lack of moral and social conscience, the principle of
exchange of favours, overconcern with power and money, a cynical
disrespect of the law and strict observance of the code of silence
all legitimate the term 'university mafia'. The proof that this
mafia mentality is in the system rather than in the blood is that
Italians often lose it after years spent abroad, whereas foreign
academics unfortunately often acquire it after a long spell in the
Italian system.
Decrees are regularly brought into force to modify concorso rules
that then elapse after a matter of weeks once they have fulfilled
their purpose of accommodating a powerful baron's son with a post,
further demonstrating the alarming role in the promotion of
organised crime played by national law.
Measures would have to include drastically decreasing power and
funding, rewarding honesty and penalising dishonesty,
demythologising the heroic strain in the national mafia mentality,
and discouraging cliques and secret organisations, which in Italy
are automatically transformed into mafia. It has been estimated
(by former higher education minister Stefano Podestŕ) that over
50 per cent of all rectors at any one time are freemasons.
An EU move towards the derecognition of Italy's universities qua
universities would surely shake the ministry and rectors into
action. Adding more rules and regulations is merely tinkering with
the problem.
The new law is a clear signal that Italy has no intention of
basing concorsi on merit. But this was to be expected from a
parliament, some 40 per cent of whose members are university
lecturers. Too many barons' protégés are already earmarked to
win concorsi years in the future. To an Italian, a post awarded
simply on merit would be unthinkable as it would mean the
admission of a possible rebel and the loss of a grateful baron's
return favour.
The new legislation confirms the real object of single university
autonomy to be a sell-out to the barons and a reduction of
ministerial work and responsibility. Undisciplined Italy needs a
centralised system, but an efficient and rigorous one.
Note:
This article first appeared in The
Times Higher Education Supplement on July 10 1998.
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