- One of the main consequences of the new state policy toward HE has been the transformation of the governance both at the system level and at the level of individual institution (university).. A crucial variable in this process is represented by the centralised or non centralised system of HE.
In both the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental European systems the state control represented a transformation of the traditional independence of the university from society control. The operative problem is then related to the process of transformation which according to Margaret Archer may be incremental in decentralised systems or due to external shock (a stop-go model) in centralised ones.
- Since the early 1980s Italian system of higher education - after a rather long period of stability - has been affected by a number of reforms introduced by different governments mostly with the purpose of keeping up with the other European systems.
Reforms basically followed the Archer’s model attributed to the centralized systems and can be interpreted with the help of the path-dependence theory.
The most recent reform has tried to introduce some components of the trends visible in many other European HES with a number of contradictions mostly due to the unclear choice between the new cultural and political model (NPM and the neo-liberal approach) and the traditional bureaucratic, centralized model.
The severe economic crisis which has been affecting the country for years now gives de facto support to the governmental negative prejudice against the academic world.
Under these circumstances, it would be of interest to verify whether the crisis will have an impact on the reform implementation and whether the new national government will take care of the HES and in which direction.
