Only 15 under-40s hold full professorships; none are younger than 35. Average age of professors 60; only 36.5% are women

Gian Antonio Stella, Corriere della sera

 

INT05F2_6596385F1_16857-k89E-U4306024873878GdF-1224x916@Corriere-Web-Sezioni-593x443Can one in a thousand make it? You wish! Gianni Morandi’s musical plea not to betray young people has gone unheeded in Italy’s universities. Not one of the 13,239 full professors is under 35. And only fifteen, a shade over one in a thousand, are under 40. But it’s the entire system that is ageing dramatically with the average age now spiking at fifty-two and a half. Teaching staff under the age of thirty, most of them researchers, have shrunk by 97% since 2008. A worried Stefano Paleari, rector of Bergamo University and chair of the university rectors’ conference (CRUI), warns: “If things carry on like this, with the cap on hiring more than one teacher for every two that retire, by 2020 we might not have any more staff young enough to take part in European programmes”.