In recent days it was presented at the Sapienza University of Rome XXI Survey of the Alma Laurea Interuniversity Consortium on "Profile and employment status of 2018 graduates". This is an important survey which has been produced annually for over two decades and which focuses on one of the crucial factors in the country's development: the results of human capital formation activities. To do this, almost all of the student population graduating from Italian universities is contacted. Compared to Profile the survey concerns 90% of graduates in 75 Italian universities (280.230 students). For the Employment conditionon the other hand, the graduates involved are over 630.000 and concern subjects in different years from the achievement of the various degree titles.
An extraordinarily significant statistical reference, therefore, which offers a picture full of critical points, which adds to the data already provided by the OECD (Education at a glance, 2018) on the delay that characterizes the Italian education system compared to the pace of the school systems and universities in industrialized and developing countries. We must not forget, in fact, that in these countries it is definitely investing in the training of new skills to be included in the innovation processes that are affecting the global economy. In Italy, on the other hand, overall public expenditure on education is the lowest among OECD countries e only 26% of Italians aged 25-34 are university graduates, against 43% of the average for the same group of countries.
Coming tosurvey by Alma Laurea, it helps to understand how the current situation of contemporary university education in Italy contributes to worsening the already precarious state of social and economic health of the country, affecting above all the prospects that are gradually forming. Limiting ourselves to highlighting only some of the main problems investigated in the analysis:
– The crisis strikes again and does not spare skilled labour: in 2018, the employment rate of first level graduates one year after graduation, for example, was 72,1%, still much lower than that recorded in 2007 (82,8%) and although slight recovery compared to the minimum value of 2011 (65,7%). Basically, for more than a quarter of graduates, obtaining a degree is not enough to place them on the job market. A graduate today earns on average less than in 2007. In fact, in 2018 the net monthly salary received one year after graduation decreased by about 10% compared to 2007. Now you earn between €1.100 and €1250, a decade previously between 1250 and 1350€ approximately.
– Gender, territorial and social inequalities persist: women, who represent 58.7% of the total number of graduates, earn €84 net per month less than men. One year after graduation, in the north they earn €147 net monthly more than a graduate working in the south. Among graduates there is a clear "over-representation" of young people from family backgrounds favored from a socio-cultural point of view (parents with degrees, entrepreneurs, etc.). In other words, unease and inequalities remain consistent.
- Mobility in studies contributes to the desertification of young people and skills in the South: observing, in fact, those who decide to study in another geographical area, only 2.5% of graduates in the North decide to graduate in another region of the country. In the South of Italy, 26.4% of young graduates who choose to graduate in central or northern universities are as much as 47.7%. This means that the South loses a quarter of its graduates every year. In addition, only 2013% of those who graduated in 52.3 studied and worked in their area of residence, while a good XNUMX% experienced some form of mobility in the work phase: in both case it is a process of social impoverishment of gigantic proportions for the South.
These few but important data give us a serious alarm for the future of the country. On the one hand they re-propose, also from the point of view of the availability of quality human capital, the seriousness of the conditions in the South. On the other hand, they recall problems that particularly concern the youngest and most enterprising sections of the country's population: the generations that will build the future and who have the task of cultivating the world of knowledge and skills. A world that has distant roots in our country and to which a fundamental role must be entrusted as a factor of innovation and as an element of connection of the national context with the main scientific and economic realities that are establishing themselves on the global scene.
There is no sign of attention from the government political forces to address the problems that result from this situation. The silence is deafening. And we don't understand, or we don't want to understand, that for the South and for the formation of human capital – essential factors for launching development – a broad and structural international projection of the country, built within the framework of a European growth plan and with a strong commitment of resources to invest.
