To the Deans, Teachers, Researchers, Administration and Service Staff, Students...
The aim of this document is to inform the european university system about what is happening now in Italy as a consecuence of the approval of the law 133/08, related to the restraint of the public expenditure, whose text reflects the proposal of Minister Tremonti.
This law affects all public administrations, from regional level to local ones, from the Police to the University.
The reductions planned in the referred law are several and affect the different types of administration, no matter the functions or services they provide, nor their importance.
The most relevant actions (consequences) affecting public universities are:
a) Teachers and administration employees´ turn-over block expected to be of a 20% for the period between 2009-2011 and, progressively, to a 50% percentage that will be reached in the period 2012-2013. This block will cause a severe impoverishment of the teaching offer and the quality of services and, at the same time, will prevent the beginning of the awaited generational change frustrating as well the expectations of all people who started the way of research and studies.
b) The severe cut of the, already meager, Ordinary Financial Fund (FFO) of the public university (1,5 million euros from 2009 to 2013), subsequently deteriorated due to the advances contained in the Dpef. The law foresees a reduction of around a 20% in three years of the FFO without considering that the financial aid given by the government to the italian university system is already between the last/shortest of the European Union.
c) The possibility given to the Academic Senators of transforming universities into private foundations using elections that would be solved by absolute majority; an irreversible change that will create an even more classist university (only for those who could pay for it) damaging the freedom of teaching and researching.
The italian student movement wishes to take part in the development of a serious discussion about the future of the university system and the research in Italy, and about the necessary reform procedures that affect them by means of a query and the implication of all the different sectors taking part/involved in them (teachers, students, researchers, technical and administration personnel). But a serious meeting and discussion process with the italian government about these aspects could only start once fulfilled an inalienable condition: The withdrawal or abolition of the measures relating the university contained in the law 133/08, the absolute cancellation of law 137/08 (related to the Elementary School), as well as the cancellation of the pre-announced designs / plans of structural contrareform of university and research.
The italian student movement does not prove any specific sympathy for any politic party and does not want to be influenced by them. Our protest has only good intentions and is just a democratic request.
We ask the european public opinion the support of our cause because a culturaly impoverished Italy will make the whole of the European Union weaker (institution in which the italian public education system trusts firmly).
“I have wrote myself just four words: First is equality; second, diversity; third, emotion and fourth solidarity”
LettereInMovimento (Letters in Movement)
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
http://lettereinmovimento.blogspot.com
1 Words pronounced by a yugoslavian student in the meeting of Belgrade in 1968.
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