Thirty years ago, a major reform changed the university system in Italy.
Since then, the Italian academic world has been subject to a roller-coaster of
legislative changes and reform bills that have failed to prevent its
progressive decline – a decline that has been exacerbated by limited public
investment and, recently, by severe spending cuts. The purpose of this
article is to provide an overview of how the Italian university system has
evolved in response to the legislative and political changes of the last thirty
years. In our opinion, it is now reverting back to a situation analogous to
that of the pre-1980s, thus reflecting a pattern of historical change that was
first described by the Italian philosopher Gianbattista Vico as a ricorso.
According to Vico’s view of history (Vico, 1744), the progression of corsi e
ricorsi does not necessarily improve situations – after all, not everything
that is new is better. Indeed, the changes in the university system that are