Stranger than (Science-)fiction!

I paste this article from the main Italian paper, "Corriere della Sera".

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Age Demographics of Academics in Italy

Only Nine Academics Out Of 18,000 Are Under 35. Young scholars account for 0.05% of university staff. Some brains are draining back from abroad but universities shun them.

ROME – Luckily for Paolo De Coppi, he didn’t fall for the bait on the hook of the “reverse the brain drain” law.Sadly for Italy, and luckily for him, De Coppi stayed where he was to study stem cells and make the sensational discovery that was on the front pages of newspapers around the world yesterday.The brains that did come back, lured by the prospect of sidestepping bureaucratic hurdles, power cliques and trade union restrictions to obtain a university post are now regretting giving up their jobs in America, Holland or Germany. They are having to grapple with the same old vested interests of Italy’s anomalous system.Two numbers say it all.Out of 18,651 tenured teaching staff, only nine are younger than Paolo De Coppi, who is 35.Nought point nought five per cent.In contrast, some 5,647 are 65 or older,which is 30.3%.Yet the powers that be in the universities know very well.

They know that Enrico Fermi won the Nobel Prize at 37, Renzo Piano designed the Beaubourg at 34, Federico Faggin invented the microchip at 30, Bill Gates founded Microsoft at 30 and that Larry Page and Sergey Brin swept aside the internet giants with Google when they were only 25. They also know that experience is crucial and that wisdom comes with age, perhaps pointing out Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who was getting on when he published Il gattopardo (The Leopard). But for some things, especially science, there is a golden age.It is an age that Italy’s young geniuses spend queuing outside the office door of some luminary in the hope of getting a contract worth a few hundred euros.The cold, unforgiving ministry figures are official, updated to 1 January 2007 and given to the Corriere della Sera by tax code [which includes date of birth – Trans.].

Those figures tell us that in the past 22 years, the number of tenured teachers in state universities has more than doubledfrom 8,454 in 1985 to the 18,651 we quoted earlier.But this multiplication of chairs has not privileged younger academics.The pie charts published here are taken from an article by scholars Stefano Zapperi and Francesco Sylos Labini. Updated for Italy with today’s figures, they tell us that our humiliating 0.05% of under-35s compares with 7.3% in America, 11.6% in France and 16% in the United Kingdom.In contrast, the proportion of over-65s falls to 5.4% in America, 1.3% in France and 1% in the UK.Let’s be honest,is it possible that the largest group of Italian university teachers (1,048 individuals) by age is over 60, in other words two years older than the human flotsam that still nostalgically belongs to the Russian Communist Party?But the problem involves more than tenured staff.It may seem unlikely but among the 18,150 associates, generally “associated” with continuing university careers and waiting to obtain tenure, the largest age cohort is exactly the same:the 60-year-olds.There are 1,758 associates who have already blown out their 65th birthday candle,which means there are 683 more than the under-40s. For the 21,639 researchers, things are a little betterbut they are still a long way from levels in developed countries.

The problem is not only scientific or cultural, it goes deeper. We need only mention that according to the report on universities, non-teaching wage costs (1.851 billion euros) fell slightly after taking inflation into account. There was also a 10.8% drop in the money spent on durables, in other words, investment.But in 2004 (today the figure is even higher), teaching staff cost 4.495 billion euros, a real increase of 9.3% over 2001.And thank goodness that politicians no longer make things worse.There are 93 researchers, associates and tenured university teachers in Parliament but only Romano Prodi and Gerardo Bianco say they have actually retired: others use more or less ambiguous turns of phrase.They represent one tenth of all parliamentarians.Since 31 March 1993, they have no longer been able to pocket a double salarybut some of the privileges that the professor-parliamentarians had granted themselves still remain.Older teachers can be taken off the permanent list while continuing to receive their salary. In this way, they are paid by the university system but no longer have any obligation to do a single hour’s lecturing or research.The entry threshold for this feudal privilege was gradually modified until [former education minister Letizia – Trans.] Moratti (hurray!) abolished it.For the future.In the meantime, gross salaries of 150,000 euros for professors and 110,000 euros for associates will continue to be paid to 1,012 “off-list” staff in 2007, 1,372 in 2008 and 1,888 in 2009. The situation is exacerbated by a string of selection-examination scandals and influential professors who leave their chairs to their children or grandchildren as if they were household ornaments. An extreme case is Bari, where all the professors in one corridor have the same surname. What would you do in the shoes of a youngster wanting to teach or do research? Thousands have already given their answer and left.

Then in late January 2001, the Amato government launched the “reverse the brain drain” programme.Attempting for the first time to halt the flight of academics to every corner of the world, it offered exiles the opportunity to return with an initial three-year full-time contract by which the state took responsibility for the salary and for 90% of the research project proposed by the candidate.The Centre-right government endorsed this project and reinforced it.Subsequent decrees in 2003 and 2005 stated clearly that the objective was to offer “young Italian researchers working abroad the opportunity to make a definitive return to their country”.Is that clear?“Definitive”.That was Italy’s undertaking to the Italians who had left posts that were often extremely prestigious and extremely well-paid.The offer was for a “de-fi-ni-tive” job so they wouldn’t have to get dragged into the kitchen politics that plague some of our universities.The commitment was reiterated by Ms Moratti on 10 May last year when she explained that after “the introduction into Italy of more than 460 academics with fixed-term contracts, this year priority has been given to stabilising their position”.

Do you know how it ended?The ambitious programme, which cost 52 million euros, collapsed in the face of thousands of exceptions, endless red tape and never-ending procedural obstacles.So X, Y and Z were geniuses?Fine.Even if all the forms were properly filled in, assessments had to be made of what their title in America was worth in Italy, and then there were the qualifications, the papers, the official stamps and so on. The upshot wasthat out of 460 academics attracted back at great effort, only about 50 have so far been officially requested by Italian universities, and only ten are believed to have cleared the hurdle of the CUN (National University Council).And the irony is that they can’t even take their chances in a competitive examination.Those were suspended in 2003 pending new rules. So good luck. Or goodbye.

Sergio Rizzo
Gian Antonio Stella