Tension as Italian students protest education law

Thousands of Italian students marched in protest against a new university reform law yesterday as police blocked off large parts of central Rome to stop a repeat of violent clashes at a similar march a week ago.

Last week’s demonstration saw cars torched, shop windows smashed and dozens injured in street battles between protesters and riot police after the initially peaceful march descended into some of the worst violence seen in Rome for years.

No trouble was reported yesterday in a rainy Rome but there were clashes at a demonstration in Palermo and reports of other incidents in Naples, Milan and Turin.

The law, which the government says will strengthen Italy’s crumbling university system but which critics say will merely cut funding without solving real problems, was due for Senate approval yesterday though a vote may be delayed to today.





In Rome, the march avoided the so-called “Red Zone” created by police blockades, instead occupying part of the A24 highway that runs east to the city of L’Aquila, whose residents have long complained bitterly of broken government promises to clear up the damage from last year’s earthquake.

“You all alone in the Red Zone, us free in the city” read one mocking banner, addressed to the government ministries and parliament buildings in the historic centre.

With an official youth unemployment rate of around 25 per cent in the country overall and as high as 35 per cent in the poorer south, the battle over university reform has crystallised discontent over the future of Italy’s young people.

“We will certainly continue mobilising,” Rome student Claudio Rizzo told Reuters Television.

“It’s not only a mobilisation against university reforms but of a generation that is making itself heard again over the politics of the country, the issues we face and the precarious situation in which we live,” he said.

Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini, who has piloted the new law through parliament, said the measures were urgently needed to equip Italian students for employment.

“It is essential to restore dignity and usability to Italian university degrees,” she said in an open letter to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The reform cuts the number of university courses and faculties and reduces funding for grants. It also sets time limits for research, overhauls the admissions system, increases the role of the private sector in university governance and limits the duration of rectorships.

The government, under pressure to cut public debt, says spending cuts are necessary but the reform will create a more merit-based system which is closer to employers’ needs.

Supporters of the bill say Italy’s overcrowded universities produce too many social science graduates who are ill-fitted for employment, and not enough qualified engineers or English speakers, and the system needs radical overhaul.

Critics, many of whom also support the principle of reforming the universities, say the system has been systematically starved of funds and further cuts will seriously endanger Italy’s research capacity.

“We are asking for this bill to be blocked and for the whole public education system to be refinanced,” the Student Network, which groups different associations, said in a statement