A che punto è la notte? Il ritorno della rendita e l’avventura delle università italiane

Abstract

In the last few decades, many tensions have developed around university as an institution. Once a flywheel for climbing the social ladder, the academic enterprise seems to have lost its relevance as a vehicle for social and economic mobility. No reform has succeeded over time in solving those fundamental problems which impede the university to function as a “transmission belt”, as Louis Althusser would say.
Tensions have grown around every aspect of the functions, operations and “structure” of the university: the organization, the recruitment of administrative and scholarly personnel, governance, curriculum, teaching practices, and institutional goals and priorities. Everyone calls for a meritocratic higher ed-ucation system while claiming indignation about the current state of affairs.
This article tries to re-construct – etsi Marx non daretur – the plot between the current form of the capital and its superstructural reflexes, particularly in Italy. And it wonders whether the recent rise in the return on capital in today’s economy is connected, if at all, with the concomitant social erosion of the university’s place in society.