Commentary
The neoliberal model that risks destroying the public university
Although the protesters are rallying against the current government, which is responsible for the latest budget cuts to the universities, it is worth remembering that this intervention is part of a wider established trend that did not originate in Italy.
The “state of unrest” at Italian universities is an important signal. After so many years, the different protagonists in the world of academia, from students to teaching staff (tenured or not), have demonstrated together against yet another cut in the resources allocated to public universities.
This was a significant achievement, because, from the Gelmini reform onward, the various legislative interventions targeting the national university system were defended by the politicians who promoted them by resorting to the same playbook every time: pitting the interests of those who had already joined the academic world on a stable basis against those who aspired to do so, particularly by suggesting that reforms were necessary to purge the universities of “do-nothings” and make room for “the deserving.”
For example, the introduction of a new way of funding the universities, based on a mechanism of rewards and punishments devised by an independent agency, ANVUR, endowed with powers so broad as to erode those of the relevant ministry, was defended by a wide, cross-party consensus that brought together not only most political parties, but also the major press outlets and business associations. Anyone who tried to oppose it was immediately branded as a defender of “do-nothings,” an enemy of progress and an obstacle to the development of young people.
This is why it is important that nowadays, researchers who are not yet tenured are in the front row of the protests against the new cuts. This massive participation by the younger generation tells us that the nakedness of the proverbial emperor is now visible to all, and that the idea that the creeping privatization of the Italian university system was necessary to make room for the excluded was only an ideological device to achieve a political goal that had little chance of being accepted by the public if it had been properly informed about what was at stake in the “reforms.” We will see in the coming months whether the “state of unrest” will have the effect of fostering a new awareness among public opinion of the danger that Italy is about to lose one of the greatest social achievements of the post-World War II era: a plural and inclusive system of higher education, able not only to train technicians and professionals, but also to nurture the dynamic public culture that is an essential requirement of democracy.
Although the protesters are rallying against the current government, which is responsible for the latest budget cuts to the universities, it is worth remembering that this intervention is part of a wider established trend that did not originate in Italy. The policies of defunding public universities, and the bean-counting contrivances used to justify them, were first introduced in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s by Conservative governments. With the Education Act of 1988, the Tories replaced the “consensual” funding system that had enabled the expansion of the British public university system, which opened it to students from the less affluent classes, and progressively to the children of immigrants as well, introducing an extraordinary process of renewal of the ruling classes. Those who want to understand the social significance of that period can read the captivating account written by historian Tony Judt, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Judt explains why it would most likely have been impossible for someone like him to be admitted to Cambridge and have a brilliant academic career without that massive public support.
When the Conservatives began the process of starving out the British public university system – continued by governments of both left and right ever since – the British academy was far from a den of “do-nothings,” but a model held up as a standard around the world for its outstanding achievements (as Ralf Dahrendorf has pointed out). The goal of the new governance and accountability systems introduced then, and refined later, was to subordinate public education and research to the needs of the production system. Anything that could not be justified on the basis of a stifling and myopic view of economic growth was to be discouraged. Academic freedom, for centuries a cardinal principle of the British system, started to become eroded (as historian Conrad Russell saw with great lucidity, who wrote a book denouncing this trend in 1993).
Today, British universities are at the end of their rope, forced to lower standards to attract more students (whose numbers have declined further due to Brexit), and prestigious departments are laying off valuable scholars and closing productive departments (especially in the humanities) because they can no longer afford to keep them operational due to resource shortages. These neoliberal policies implemented in the UK since the late 1980s are the model on which Italy's policies are based. In some cases, they have been made even worse by the acquiescence of the academic body, which has put up a far-less-effective resistance so far compared to their British colleagues.
“What are universities for?” This was the question posed a few years ago by Cambridge historian Stefan Collini in his book of the same name, one of the best and most thoroughly researched works on the disaster that neoliberal universities have turned into. This, I think, is also the question being posed by the “state of unrest” in Italy. It is up to civil society and politics to give an answer.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/il-modello-neoliberale-che-rischia-di-distruggere-luniversita-pubblica on 2024-12-21