Gianni Vattimo / Alberto Martinengo

*Translated for Purlieu by Robert Valgenti

 

Among the many protest movements that have spread across Italy in the past few years, one of the liveliest and loudest at getting their point across was the “Wave” [Onda]. Gathered under this name since 2008 are important elements from the world of the university: primarily, politically left-leaning students; however, it is also common to find significant elements from among the various contingent laborers1 employed by the Italian university in remarkable and at times—as we will see—disturbing numbers.

The “Wave” movement is a response to the first projects of legal reform put forward by the government of Silvio Berlusconi: the so-called “Tremonti-Gelmini” reforms, named for the Minister of the Economy, Giulio Tremonti, and the Minister of Universities, Mariastella Gelmini. On the one hand, much is known about the ills of the Italian university, even abroad (from the system of competition for professorial posts, to the age-old problem of the fixed number of students). But it is said, very correctly, that all of that aside, our universities are still able to prepare professionals and scholars who are competitive on the global stage. The same can be said of the capacity of our system to guarantee access for diverse sectors of the population, thanks to the public trust in the university, which remains an important engine of development and social mobility. Nevertheless, in these years the merits of the Italian system appear to be in grave danger, and our governments have not demonstrated even the slightest ability to confront the ills of our universities.

In short, it is a fact that if Italy suffers from “brain drain,” it must also mean that our institutions are producing graduates and researchers who can demonstrate their own abilities and the high level of their education. And it is equally clear that today our faculties accommodate students who come from families who occupy extraordinarily different social strata: students who thus have the chance to be educated at a level that would have been unthinkable merely one or two generations ago. Nevertheless, the Tremonti-Gelmini reforms (the reason why the students of the Wave have rightly called them this will be clear in a moment), not only ignore the ills mentioned above, but in fact place in grave danger the public, social and cultural values that until recently the Italian university had maintained, in spite of everything.

To speak of the “Tremonti-Gelmini” reforms, as many have rightly done and still do, is to underline the actions of the Berlusconi government, which in substance are essentially budgetary reforms that behind the shield of cutting waste have in reality struck at the heart of the control of our universities. This government was born in 2008 under the slogan of the war against loafers and identified in public workers their proper, nearly singular, objective. Now, it is right to say that something has happened when such a slogan, with the help of the Tremonti-Gelmini reforms, has also been directed at the university. The cuts at the base of ordinary funding (the amount of the budget that the minister apportions to the life of the public universities) have in reality a dramatic effect on the life of some departments—all departments, including the best ones (and there are many of them), to which mechanisms of reward have not yet been granted.

In short, the Italian university is suffering—this is clear. And it suffers more than other European universities on account of a government that is not able to recognize that knowledge and research are fundamental factors of economic development. But the paradox is that this suffering regards precisely the weakest zones of the university: the students and the plethora of contingent workers who today make our universities move forward. To speak of the “suffering of the university” does not signify the use of a purely rhetorical expression, one perhaps dictated solely by ideology. The suffering of the university is something extremely concrete. The Italian university suffers from the cuts of the Tremonti-Gelmini reforms because it no longer has the money to pay for telephone bills, printer paper, the maintenance and repair of machines that would be considered essential in any office around our country (from photocopiers to sophisticated laboratory equipment), the travel expenses for work and research conducted by employees and collaborators, the daily maintenance of the buildings themselves (from cleaning to the painting of offices), along with basic and essential services (keeping libraries open, replacing obsolete computers, etc.).  Now, if this is the waste that needs to be cut, the government is unable to explain which corporate and capitalistic mindset could ever accept that its own employees should pay out of pocket for the proper maintenance of their most essential equipment. This is the suffering into which the Tremonti-Gelmini reforms have thrown the university.

But the greatest paradox—as I anticipated—is that teachers are not the only ones who have to pay for those cuts. To the generalized reduction of economic resources for the university there corresponds in reality a marked increase in difficulties for those who take advantage of the “service” of teaching (namely, the students) and for those to whom such a “service” brings new blood in terms of research and development (namely, young contingent researchers). To a university that does not have the money to maintain libraries (hours of operation, the acquisition of new books, interlibrary loan) or to welcome students in buildings that meet the minimum standards of decency (classrooms of sufficient size, computers and other services for students), there corresponds in reality an increased difficulty, on the part of less affluent families, to continue the education of their own children.

Fewer libraries, fewer computers, dilapidated classrooms and uncomfortable seats signify an ever-greater burden placed upon families who try to respond as best they can to the deficiencies of the institution. The cost of allowing one’s children to study is always increasing: and this happens not only because of the more general economic crisis, but also (and primarily) because the services that universities are able to provide for those who enroll are always diminishing.

Given all of that, some in [Italy] claim that it is a luxury to conduct research, or in other terms, it is a luxury to reward the legitimate aspirations of the young who have demonstrated their brilliance in an academic course of study and who yearn to do research, not as a hobby that is cultivated on weekends, but as their reason and source of sustenance. The reforms of welfare and of contractual models (which even some center-left governments have been willing to support) have made it so that in the university, forms of “non-structured” or contingent work have grown exponentially, to the point of reaching disturbing levels. In many cases, the official count that universities produce on the number and types of workers in their institution demonstrate that in some departments nearly half of the people who work there do so on contingent contracts (contracts by the project, temporary collaborations, training, scholarships): that amounts to saying that for every ten “full-time” workers, there are often just as many who work with them on a contingent and thus precarious contract.

However—one might ask us—isn’t this the model closest to that of other Western countries? Why is this such a scandal in Italy? Here is the real problem: if, in fact, in the United States and in many other countries research is often associated with the status of fixed-term work, it happens that this occurs through contracts that in general are much more lucrative and that balance their precariousness with much more significant financial compensation. Now, over the course of years, it is increasingly clear that our country has adopted this model, but has added to it a level of pay that is not even minimally close to that found in other countries. In concrete terms, in our departments we have spent 50% of the budget on contingent workers; and these 50% work with contracts that in many cases don’t even earn them 1,500 euro. To be clear: this is 1,500 euro per year, not per month. It should also not be forgotten that, above all, in the Humanities departments, the precarious nature of these positions is a given fact that accompanies academics from graduation to their retirement forty years later.

But how have the Tremonti-Gelmini cuts taken part in this situation? First of all, it is clear that in the approved measures and in the applicable decrees in phases of elaboration one sees only a general reshuffling of the cards (according to the principle “change everything, because nothing really changes”), but no concrete effect on the real defects of our universities that I mentioned earlier: programs and career advancement, among others. And, in the second place, in matters of contingent labor it happens in very many cases that contracts have worsened beyond the imaginable. We speak of the reduction (and, in many cases, of the suspension) of research fellows, which are the highest academic posts for our most talented students. And we speak of the transformation of contingent contracts into “zero compensation” contracts, that is, ones that use manpower hired explicitly on a voluntary basis: with teaching or research activities now conducted in a manner completely without compensation.
In recent years, the Italian public university has become this: universities that  live on little; students who work in dilapidated and crumbling structures, with services whose usefulness diminish day by day; teachers who find themselves in workplaces where pay is guaranteed, but often without the support one normally finds in any business, no matter how big or small it is (despite the slogan “university business,” which politicians would pretend to follow); young contingent researchers who are forced to work for free or are underpaid, publishing research recognized in the entire world but without even the smallest chance for a future in our own country.

Europe, as a society of knowledge, can and must also save Italy in this. And it ought to do it with some very concrete initiatives:

1. The imposition in member states of recognized and recognizable criteria for the judgment of merit and productivity, in order to reward true merit;
2. The increase in available sources of funding for research in all disciplines (including the humanities), in order to improve the working conditions for contingent researchers;
3. The increase of international exchanges, through large economic concessions to Erasmus students and to young researchers;
4. Aid to publishers for the translation and diffusion of the most important scientific publications in the member states of the Union.

Notes

1. Translator’s Note: The Italian noun “precariato” denotes temporary employment, but the root of the word “precario” connotes the precariousness of these positions. I have opted for the word “contingent laborer” as its translation, as this is the term used currently to indicate faculty and researchers who work without jobs.