All the blues in the government on Multiversity’s online universities
The agreement signed by the Minister of Public Administration, the Forzista Zangrillo, with the online universities to train state managers triggers the ire of another minister, the party comrade Bernini of the University. And Il Foglio takes advantage of Violante's lobbying for Multiversity…
The Multiversity group, controlled by the British CVC fund, which manages the Pegaso, San Raffaele and Mercatorum online universities, is in turmoil. After all, the training market, which saw the telematics segment explode with Covid, is worth something like 19 billion and shows no signs of slowing down, on the contrary. Perhaps this is also why Multiversity seems to have started a connection with parts of the majority and the government, so as to secure privileged places such as the presence at the table of the Pa 110 cum laude initiative.
WHAT IS THE PA INITIATIVE 110 cum laude
This is a program born on the wave of enthusiasm of the Pnrr and on the need to update the skills of state workers, the result of a memorandum of understanding signed on 7 October 2021 between the Minister for Public Administration, Renato Brunetta , and the Minister of University and Research, Maria Cristina Messa , to allow all public employees to benefit from an incentive for accessing tertiary education: degree courses, specialization courses and master's degrees.
With the change of government, from Draghi to Meloni , the private digital universities controlled by the British-Luxembourg CVC fund – namely Mercatorum, Pegaso and San Raffaele University of Rome – signed an agreement at the beginning of summer with the Ministry of Public Administration for the training of public employees.
THE TELEMATIC UNIVERSITIES RECOGNIZED BY THE MINISTRY
Alongside traditional universities, since the 2000s, telematic universities have also been recognized in Italy, which provide courses in e-learning mode for all three cycles of higher education, with the obligation to carry out only the in-person exams. profit and discussion of the thesis. As anticipated in the last paragraph, there are currently eleven, all under private law:
Telematic University of Studies “IUL”
“e-Campus” telematic university
“Giustino Fortunato” Telematic University
“Guglielmo Marconi” telematic university
“Uninettuno” international telematic university
“Leonardo da Vinci” Telematic University
“Niccolò Cusano” Telematic University
“San Raffaele” Telematic University
“UNITELMA Sapienza” online university
Telematic University “Universitas Mercatorum”
WHAT DOES ANVUR SAY ABOUT TELEMATIC UNIVERSITIES
An unexpected signature. Even more so if we consider that the latest Anvur report from last June, retrieved by Messaggero in the summer, highlighted how during the 2022 courses traditional universities had made one professor available for every 28.5 students while in telematics the ratio rose to 384.8 students per teacher. “This – commented the Caltagirone newspaper – determines lower costs and decidedly higher revenues for organizing the same type of course, without guaranteeing the same quality standards of training”.
In fact, we read in the report: "The combined effect of the reduction in the teaching requirements required for the accreditation of study courses, in any case in the face of an increase in the number of teachers at the same time as the explosion in the number of students enrolled, has determined the significant increase in the student/teacher ratio, which went from 152.2 in 2012 to 384.8 in 2022 (an indicator approximately thirteen times higher than traditional universities)".
The article also resurrects the conclusions of two months ago by Anvur: "To think that a training offer can sustain itself by completely contracting out teaching outside the university is considered an element of scant attention to the quality of teaching and the centrality of student".
“The message – underlines the newspaper of the Caltagirone group – comes following an evaluation of online universities compared with traditional ones: none obtained a promotion with full marks from the agency: out of 11, 8 achieved a satisfactory rating , only one is considered fully satisfactory and two have ended up under observation for lack of fundamental quality elements. As regards the traditional universities, seven obtained "very positive", 30 "fully satisfactory", 42 "satisfactory" and only one case is conditional on future observations".
THE SIGNATURE OF DISCORD
The initiative of the Department of Public Administration – according to the reconstruction of Start Magazine – is causing quite a bit of discussion among the government majority (Lega and Fratelli d'Italia circles turn up their noses) and even among ministers. In fact, the signing of the agreement, Il Foglio writes today, "would have taken by surprise" the titular minister of the relevant department, Anna Maria Bernini , who did not expect that her colleague at the PA, Paolo Zangrillo , would also promote online universities in close State collaborators for initiatives concerning the training of public employees.
Also because, according to what Start has learned, on the qualitative issue Bernini does not intend to give in and soften towards the online universities, which present themselves at the appointment with the government weighed down by the unflattering judgments of the Anvur. According to experts, the Minister of the University will be inflexible on the reform which provides for the increase in the number of documents for telematics (which will thus have an inevitable increase in costs compared to rather prosperous revenues, as can be seen from their budgets ).
THE HAND OF VIOLANTE
Il Foglio also reports that the online universities received a big hand from Luciano Violante , "holder of the interests […] of the subsidiaries of Multiversity". The law created under the Draghi government, it is reconstructed, did not include telematics "for reasons related to quality standards".
Zangrillo for his part wrote to Domani claiming to have complied with a ruling by the Lazio Regional Administrative Court regarding an appeal presented by Stefano Bandecchi 's Unicusano which asked to be able to adhere to the protocol for planning courses and lessons for public employees without having received any answers by Zangrillo's predecessor, Renato Brunetta . The TAR had thus established that the ministry should at least have responded, without however indicating any obligation on the signing of the protocols. “The gaps and doubts would have been filled, cross government sources and top management of the State told Il Foglio, by Violante's legitimate lobbying activity” who would have been accompanied at times, the newspaper directed by Claudio Cerasa always writes, by a “former well-known fellow magistrate".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/tutti-gli-scazzi-azzurri-nel-governo-sulle-universita-telematiche-di-multiversity/ on Wed, 20 Sep 2023 13:09:15 +0000.