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I HAVE A REGIONAL UNIVERSITY DREAM --- a speech to the candidates to Rector of Politecnico di BARI

Mike Ciavarella's picture

 taken from http://rettorevirtuoso.blogspot.com/2013/07/i-have-regional-university-d...

 Sorry for the spell check --- I did not have time to do it!

 

I HAVE A REGIONAL UNIVERSITY DREAM

I'll steal to
Martin Luther King's famous opening words, and the heirs of Martin could ask
the copyrights (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_have_a_dream). This reminds me
ILO and attempts of Vito Albino to make money from technology transfer. Vito
needs to do more, if MIT claims that its alumni are holding business for the
equivalent of the GDP of France and Italy combined.

But let's go to the theme of my reflection, with a vaguely sexist joke: Size
does matter!

In my speech on my humble blog before the election campaign (rettorevirtuoso.blogspot.com), I had tried to
launch 5 ideas for a brainstorming among the candidates. Till now I must say
that I could not get much attention from candidates (instead quite some by the
"blogosphere", 32 thousand readers in the last month are perhaps
mostly the student community on facebook). In a general sense, I have found some
of these ideas in the messages of candidates Vito Albino, Leonardo Damiani,
Luigi Galantucci, Saverio Mascolo.

If King spoke of civil rights and marginalization, in Puglia today we must
speak out against the risk of ending up in a cultural and technological
marginalization and third world. The risk is there, the exodus of brains in
Puglia is monstrous, and it is not the case that face display of digits you can
find it easily.

I've heard Mascolo talk of excellence. But I have not figured out how he wants
to do it. I had the pleasure of being Humboldt Fellow, and the motto of the
Humboldt Foundation is “Exzellenz verbindet” --- that excellence is recognized
around the world by itself, and binds, regardless of borders. (I invite anyway
to visit the website of the Humboldt foundation). We need to unite, because if
we remain Politecnico di BARI, alone, we will not go much farther.

Mascolo also talked about internationalization, and dramatically increase the
number of foreign students. In fact I indicated Ryanair flights which have
brought many tourists. But they have also brought students? Why not, I do not
understand? And if you must do something, what?

In the beautiful letter Galantucci, I read that we are, in proportion, more
effective than the Polytechnics of the North, and this seems to confirm the
SCImago data, very flattering, they see us at # 630 in the world, but second in
Italy, after the Bocconi . But this is no reason to lull us? 630 universities
in the world are better than us. I do not think much good news. Luigi is much
talk of ethics, stimulating creativity, but will do?

Finally, in the last few days I received a letter from one of our Polytechnic
student who wasted no fewer than 57 credits of his studies for a bureaucratic
process that eventually awarded him only the standard bachelor's degree. I
published his letter in my blog with a few comments and I picked up other
stories of "excellent" people as he calls them Mascolo, which also ended up in the national press. We are proud
to have them, in words, but in reality dealing with them as, at best, like
everyone else, and sometimes worse, for envy, for burocracy, for the vetoes.
For outdated laws! I remember I graduated first in my class, and the second graduated a
year after me
. Apart from the advantage of spending a year of my life
doing something else (the reserve officer, the national representative of all of them in fact), the Polytechnic did not give me
even a symbolic medal, or a message to some "career centers".
Everything was very provincial. And I'm not sure that it is not yet.

I had always hated the law that prohibits more than one University to enroll in
the same time (I later discovered is art. 142 of the Royal Decree of 31 August
1933 no. 1592), with the obligation to deliver the material in the original diploma
to the Uni secretariat, as if wanting to study more were a crime to be pursued!
I do not have time to read the parliamentary proceedings that led to this
decision, but I can think of only two criteria that led to the choice:

1) the requirement of presence - especially in an ordered society as the
fascist one
2) avoid an excessive cost per student of the right to study (yet to be
demonstrated, especially for the few who really wanted to study so much)

I wonder before 1933 (we're talking tens of thousands of college students, not
the nearly 2 million now), what excesses had never happened for bringing the
legislature to put this constraint. Much more, I wonder how many laws of 1933
are still alive today! I do not know how many university reforms we did, but
this very serious constraint, no minister has ever thought to scratch it!

But let us make a practical remark: a citizen can be full-time public servant in Italy,
and enroll in university. Instead, if you are just a student, you cannot enroll
in two universities? This is crazy! Even assuming that to be enrolled at a
university is a full-time job, as a public servant, paid by the State, you can have free access to the University. So why one full-time student of a
university cannot enroll in another? I do not get it!

But there is
worse. Why can I do double and triple undergraduate degrees (in english also in
Italy, to sound more globalized), if I take second and third degree from abroad
(and not all foreign universities are better than Italian, I guess), but I
cannot do with two universities closer together? I think a triple paradox, more
than triple degree!

I propose: we change the norm on working students and introduce the part-time.
As in the UK, where you cannot join 2 universities in full-time, part-timers
but you can (and in practice, since they do not control, even at N University
part-time, paying a lot of taxes).

You may wonder if I'm talking only of the 'excellent' students. No! Here is my
"dream".

A regional university where the student
can choose which venues to attend so much more free today, achieving at the end
of more than a degree, and choosing themselves, the best teachers.

A regional university where the "best of the worlds" is available to
every student who enrolls. In Lecce, we of the spearheads in nanotechnology?
Well, they are available to the students of Foggia. In Bari we have an
excellent Classical Philology, just to say something without offending anyone?
It could also be of interest to an engineering student of Lecce?

I remember the
speech of Steve Jobs "Stay Foolish, stay hungry" students to
Stanford. Do not get caught by the apparent divisions between subjects. There
are uses of cultures that come out of the strangest unexpected, then if the
soil is fertile as the Silicon Valley. And we, again, are not the Silicon
Valley.

Students, I shall say,
should not wait for politicians to make a move, and should even rebel today!  You want to do the "federation" of all the
regional universities in my "dream". We're going to take legal
action! Suppose a student to enroll in Uniba and then want to subscribe to
PoliBA. If your second entry is prevented, one goes before a national court,
holding that the decision to reject the entry of the second degree is outlaw. During hearing, the national court may disapply the national law contrary to Community
law (and there should be a given that in almost all EU states, at least
part-time, the two universities you can attend), or if you raise questions of
interpretation a reference to the Court of Justice of the EU.

In any case, these are "wishful thinking", which I'm not sure that
Candidate Rector, luckily for me as I am too busy already with my activities!


Should that become desires of the students, which firmly took them to their
representatives of students, the candidates Rectors, politicians, and the only
way 'will come to the Minister Carrozza. Do not wait, students, the old like me
(not so much ...) to solve your problems!


Do not think that abolishing the constraint is an easy thing. It 'a revolution
in Italy. If all you can enroll everywhere, as you do with the closed entry
University? Even the admission test you can do for medicine in a single
university (to avoid excess of demands I suppose)! Then, you exclude a limited
number of universities? Moreover, you do it with a single tax, as I think I
read in one country? O by multiplying the tuition fees, or facilities, as in
other countries, rewarding the desire to do? Finally, a note: you can luckily
graduate from the Conservatory in this country without having to stay outside
the University. That there is a special law? Should we enlarge that?


I have hope. For example, the new Rector of the University of Bari, Antonio
Uricchio, he worked for the "detached" Faculty in Taranto, yet it was
also recognized his work in Bari's community. I am happy for him, and Taranto,
a city where I also I teach, and which so afflicted by problems.


I remember I reported at a conference of the University the experiment I did on
Facebook of my classes. According to me, it keeps very well, ask my students. I
am not the most innovative and arrogant professor of the Polytechnic, but there
was no incentive to this experiment. Why would other teachers do that? They
have no reason, no prize. So why not propose candidates Rectors real
innovations, concrete, accurate, and not only of good intentions? Even I start
in this speech by Martin Luther King and Steve Jobs, and yet I tried to drop
them into our reality. Perhaps it is easy for me, because they are not
nominated Rector, and it's better that way!


I dedicate this speech to my beloved students of Taranto, maybe stop calling of
Taranto, because they can study in Apulia. And I, lecturer "in
Taranto," I am no longer considered standard B, for life, because in the
unlikely event that I am worth something, students of Lecce will be to follow
me.

Michele Ciavarella.

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