Italian Students as a Political Actor? The Policy Impact of the Recent Student Mobilizations in the Field of Higher Education

Over the last ten years, university students have retaken the political scene in more than fifty countries around the world. Student mobilizations have arisen to protest against the global trend of university marketization. Some of these mobilizations have exceeded the field of higher education and have succeeded in expanding their scope and goal to affect the political system as a whole. In other words, we have assisted to the re-emergence of students as a key political actor in the national decision-making process. However, not in all political contexts and fields of higher education students have managed to be successful political actors. In this respect, the Italian case has been emblematic. After decades of political passivity, Italian students have massively mobilized in the years 2008 and 2010 to protest against the implementation of two political measures fostering the neoliberal conception of higher education. More notably, the casus belli of these mobilizations was the implementation of a financial measure cutting public funding for higher education in 2008, accompanied by a NPM reform of the university governance in 2010. Despite their high participation, none of the two mobilizations has managed to change the course of the political events. The Italian government has approved and implemented the two measures and, accordingly, the Italian student movement has lost the political battle. In short, the recent student mobilizations failed to produce any policy impact on the Italian field of higher education. Why was this the case? By interviewing the main actors involved in these events (student leaders, academic authorities and policy makers) I will advance some hypothesis, both related to the characteristics of the student movement and to the features of political-institutional context, which make it improbable for the Italian students to nationally achieve their goals and, therefore, become a successful political actor