Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T08:53:27.366Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

eight - Higher education, between conservatism and permanent reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2022

Ugo Ascoli
Affiliation:
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
Emmanuele Pavolini
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Macerata, Italy
Get access

Summary

Introduction: higher education as a part of the welfare state

This chapter describes and discusses the main features of the Italian higher education system (HES) as a part of the welfare state. It is not a standard point of view, as policy research on the welfare state typically focuses on other policies (health care, pension systems, employment policies, etc).

Such an exclusion cannot be justified anymore. It is well-known that national states invested a huge amount of resources to expand participation in higher education for reasons going beyond its direct economic returns (Schofer and Meyer, 2005). Higher education can be framed within the ‘Social Investment approach’ (Morel et al, 2012) as a key policy fostering an accumulation of human capital, with potential relevant returns for workers’ employability: higher education does, indeed, produce skilled workers, and, in this way, it increases labour productivity and, as a consequence, the well-being of the population. However, this is just a part of the story. First, as observed by the historical sociology of education (Collins, 2000), the increasing participation in higher education becomes a factor of development in itself. Indeed, it involves the direct creation of skilled jobs (professors, technicians, administrative officers), and it also incentivises the emergence of a number of satellite activities, from publishing to copying, from hospitality for students to the cultural and entertainment industry flourishing in every university town. Most of this job creation is anti-cyclical, resulting in what Collins (2000: 237) calls ‘a hidden Keynesian mechanism of reinvestment’. Second, the expansion of higher education is socially useful not just because of the skills it produces and the jobs it creates, but also because it keeps young people out of unemployment, reducing the risk of social conflict associated with high youth unemployment (Barbagli, 1982; Walters, 1984). Third, research on the non-economic returns of education shows participation in higher education to be associated with many desirable individual-level outcomes, such as civic participation, tolerance, good health, stable family behaviour, responsible consumption patterns and so on (Oreopoulos and Salvanes, 2011; Hout, 2012). Fourth, higher education, as every type of schooling, acts as a social ‘sorting machine’ (Spring, 1976; Stevens et al, 2008), allocating people to occupations on the basis of the quantity and quality of their skills.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Italian Welfare State in a European Perspective
A Comparative Analysis
, pp. 207 - 234
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×