Carlotta Rossignoli is a twenty-three years old girl from Verona, who graduated 11 months earlier in medicine with a grade of 110 and honors and an honorable mention at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. She was praised for having achieved her goal before it was due and devoting herself to 110%, as stated by herself on the media “I never lose time , not sleeping much helps me, in my opinion sleeping is a waste of time. “Leaving aside the toxic view of some people about this story , which has raised an unprecedented media fuss, and the shortened and nebulous process thanks to which she got her degree (not without economic advantages and recorded lectures); we can define the newly graduated as one of the few excellences in Italy. Excellence, by definition, is an exception: something that concerns a few people, but this fact just hides plenty of students who cope with university problems. The problem of the Italian university concerns the rest of the system: the level of mediocrity, which makes figures and represents the rule. And the rule says that in Italy there are too few graduates. The problems at the university are various : from early school leaving, to the difficulty in finding a job, to the approach and access to university. One of the most frequent problems in the university approach, which mainly affects young high school students, is the choice of faculty. In fact, a research by Cisia reports that for almost 3 out of 4 students, the choice of the course of study once the second grade higher education has been completed is done hastily in the final year or even after the final examination. The school often fails to give students the critical assessment ability and self-knowledge that allows them to make targeted choices. To make things worse, the choice of faculty is often influenced by parents; this leads young people to be dissatisfied with their studies, and often find themselves studying subjects incompatible to them. Dissatisfaction already arises in the first semesters of university and career abandonment seems to be a very common consequence. Another problem concerns the financial sphere: According to data from the survey National Student Fee and Support systems In European Higher Education 2020/2021 of Eurydice Europe, Italy is in the half of the EU countries where university fees are the highest, and one of the countries where tax exemptions and the recognition of means of entitlement to university study such as grants or housing is the lowest. Here the motto”if you want you can tend to cancel” , because in the society in which we find you have two possibilities: either being born genius or to realize your dream you need to live in a wealthy family without any money problems. Because to the problem of fees and limited number universities we must add students who stay away from home; for them life is not just a walk: they have to cope with many expenses ranging from exorbitant figures for housing (they are often forced to live in rooms of a few square meters) to the cost of public transport, food and book shopping, In short, they must grit their teeth to see their dreams come true. As Mitt Romney says: “Education is the investment that our generation makes in the future, but not everyone is able to make that investment. According to many students, one of the most obvious problems is that universities rely on a system of education that is too theoretical and not very connected to the world of work, which produces a massive brain drain. One model which we should focus on is the German model: Germany has a different system from ours because it offers people who also study professionalized paths, with the structure of technical schools and a better relationship with the world of work. Another problem is the scarcity of funds, which leads to a halt in research due to an ever-decreasing financial fund. The solution , cannot be the increase in funding as the universities are too many: a total of 112 universities. About the nepotism, so as not to miss anything, Italy is first in the ranking: according to a study of the University of Chicago says that in Italian universities cases of nepotism represent 2.3% of the total, at most 5%, a low percentage compared to all other sectors”. The Italian University is also this: a factory where shareholders are not only present personally, but also with their families. A factory where they often even invent new tasks in order to find a place for the “dear” relative. In a country where the social mobility , that accompanied the period of growth, has stopped, we can hardly hope to do anything different from our parents. In the end, it is necessary to work on several fronts in order to reduce the number of applicants, first of all by strengthening the system of guidance and mentoring programmes and decreasing the ISEE to access scholarships. This resolution is already part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan that should be implemented during 2022. We just have to wait and see where these lines of action will lead, in the hope that the possibility of studying will be made more and more concrete and easily available for students throughout Italy.
