Reforming higher technical institutions: high-tech training to provide jobs for young people and make companies more competitive
Amongst the most significant legacies of the Draghi government are the reforms to ITS, higher technical institutes, training institutions that are indispensable to fulfil the demand for qualified employees in companies operating within the digital economy. The law has been fully and unanimously approved by the Italian Chamber of Deputies in mid-July. Now, to become wholly operative, it requires 19 implementation policies, including 17 decrees, and the involvement of several ministries and regions. The hope is that this untimely government crisis and the tensions of a brief yet intensely polemical and conflictual election campaign won’t slow down the political and administrative decisions necessary to meet the employment and career needs of thousands of young people and to guarantee that companies, in such a difficult economic situation and on the brink of recession, can get the crucial skills needed to withstand competition, stay on the market and keep on growing.
The Minister of Education Patrizio Bianchi and his advisers, the Minister of Regional Affairs and the leaders of the Conference of the Regions are working hard to avoid discontinuity – keeping an eye on their efforts and support their prompt actions will only prove beneficial.
Back to the law, then. Public financing (with a dedicated fund holding 48.3 million from 2022 and PNRR – Italian and recovery and resilience plan – funds amounting to 1.5 billion over five years) will be tied into a three-year plan, in order to grant stability to the educational offering, and will reward the quality of training paths (thus, none of that indiscriminate all-round funding so dear to egalitarian drifters who have been lowering education standards for far too long).
Companies will be key to the ITS Academies (a name that, indeed, recalls corporate training structures), with teaching provided by professionals from the working sphere amounting to “at least 60% of the total number of hours”. In-company internships and apprenticeships will have to take up “at least 35%” of the training path and can also be undertaken abroad, supported by scholarships. Each ITS Foundation’s administration will have to represent the founding and participating companies, and businesses investing in the ITS will be granted a 30% tax credit, rising to 60% in the provinces with higher unemployment rates.
The law also provides for multi-regional and multisectoral ITS, thus complying with the trends of the production world, organised in networks and supply chains comprising different and converging territories and specialisations. And now (through the implementation policies) we will also need to define the new technological areas for training (currently dating back to 2008) in line with the most up-to-date productive dimensions concerning chemistry and mechatronics, life sciences, cybersecurity, the many applications of Artificial Intelligence, and so on.
It’s “a pivotal relaunch to engage with innovation and recovery”, states Giovanni Brugnoli, vice president for Human Capital, Confindustria, and textile manufacturer in the dynamic industrial area around Varese, who spent years working for the promotion of a high-level vocational training (including courses by private university LIUC, Libera Università Carlo Cattaneo). And “finally, since the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, enterprises regain their role as key training sites for our young people, co-designing specialisation paths and providing their experts as tutors” (Il Sole24Ore, 13 July).
The forecast is for a rapid growth, from the current 121 ITS with 21,000 students to much more substantial numbers, which will meet the demands of both the economic world and of students and their families, as, on average, 80% of young people graduating from an ITS find employment within a year (with peaks of 100% in territories with greater and more sophisticated industrialisation) and, in 91% of the cases, within their specialisation sector.
And there’s yet another aspect of this reform that should be highlighted: “ITS’s flexible formula, able to continuously adapt: if, for example, in four years’ time the industry were to be different, the training paths can be rapidly adjusted and new skilled workers can be promptly be provided”, explains Brugnoli.
Here’s the key point of this reform: in order to keep on competing in increasingly demanding markets, also in these times of “selective re-globalisation” (“Reinventing globalisation” was the cover headline of The Economist‘s issue of 18 June), the Italian manufacturing industry requires human resources able to feel comfortable with technological transformation and to combine different sets of knowledge and skills. We therefore need a high-tech education that can continuously update and improve itself (“Learning to learn”, say the experts), built on a high-level technological and scientific foundation and closely interconnected with work processes.
ITS and university STEM courses (focused on science, technology, engineering, mathematics, to which we should add the “a” for arts, i.e. the humanities, for STEAM) are vital tools, just as indicated by the PNRR, as per the prescriptions of the EU Next Generation Recovery Fund. A milestone in terms of opportunities for development – to be defended and rigorously translated into investments and reforms, also and above all in such extremely hard times of crisis.
(foto Getty images)
Amongst the most significant legacies of the Draghi government are the reforms to ITS, higher technical institutes, training institutions that are indispensable to fulfil the demand for qualified employees in companies operating within the digital economy. The law has been fully and unanimously approved by the Italian Chamber of Deputies in mid-July. Now, to become wholly operative, it requires 19 implementation policies, including 17 decrees, and the involvement of several ministries and regions. The hope is that this untimely government crisis and the tensions of a brief yet intensely polemical and conflictual election campaign won’t slow down the political and administrative decisions necessary to meet the employment and career needs of thousands of young people and to guarantee that companies, in such a difficult economic situation and on the brink of recession, can get the crucial skills needed to withstand competition, stay on the market and keep on growing.
The Minister of Education Patrizio Bianchi and his advisers, the Minister of Regional Affairs and the leaders of the Conference of the Regions are working hard to avoid discontinuity – keeping an eye on their efforts and support their prompt actions will only prove beneficial.
Back to the law, then. Public financing (with a dedicated fund holding 48.3 million from 2022 and PNRR – Italian and recovery and resilience plan – funds amounting to 1.5 billion over five years) will be tied into a three-year plan, in order to grant stability to the educational offering, and will reward the quality of training paths (thus, none of that indiscriminate all-round funding so dear to egalitarian drifters who have been lowering education standards for far too long).
Companies will be key to the ITS Academies (a name that, indeed, recalls corporate training structures), with teaching provided by professionals from the working sphere amounting to “at least 60% of the total number of hours”. In-company internships and apprenticeships will have to take up “at least 35%” of the training path and can also be undertaken abroad, supported by scholarships. Each ITS Foundation’s administration will have to represent the founding and participating companies, and businesses investing in the ITS will be granted a 30% tax credit, rising to 60% in the provinces with higher unemployment rates.
The law also provides for multi-regional and multisectoral ITS, thus complying with the trends of the production world, organised in networks and supply chains comprising different and converging territories and specialisations. And now (through the implementation policies) we will also need to define the new technological areas for training (currently dating back to 2008) in line with the most up-to-date productive dimensions concerning chemistry and mechatronics, life sciences, cybersecurity, the many applications of Artificial Intelligence, and so on.
It’s “a pivotal relaunch to engage with innovation and recovery”, states Giovanni Brugnoli, vice president for Human Capital, Confindustria, and textile manufacturer in the dynamic industrial area around Varese, who spent years working for the promotion of a high-level vocational training (including courses by private university LIUC, Libera Università Carlo Cattaneo). And “finally, since the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, enterprises regain their role as key training sites for our young people, co-designing specialisation paths and providing their experts as tutors” (Il Sole24Ore, 13 July).
The forecast is for a rapid growth, from the current 121 ITS with 21,000 students to much more substantial numbers, which will meet the demands of both the economic world and of students and their families, as, on average, 80% of young people graduating from an ITS find employment within a year (with peaks of 100% in territories with greater and more sophisticated industrialisation) and, in 91% of the cases, within their specialisation sector.
And there’s yet another aspect of this reform that should be highlighted: “ITS’s flexible formula, able to continuously adapt: if, for example, in four years’ time the industry were to be different, the training paths can be rapidly adjusted and new skilled workers can be promptly be provided”, explains Brugnoli.
Here’s the key point of this reform: in order to keep on competing in increasingly demanding markets, also in these times of “selective re-globalisation” (“Reinventing globalisation” was the cover headline of The Economist‘s issue of 18 June), the Italian manufacturing industry requires human resources able to feel comfortable with technological transformation and to combine different sets of knowledge and skills. We therefore need a high-tech education that can continuously update and improve itself (“Learning to learn”, say the experts), built on a high-level technological and scientific foundation and closely interconnected with work processes.
ITS and university STEM courses (focused on science, technology, engineering, mathematics, to which we should add the “a” for arts, i.e. the humanities, for STEAM) are vital tools, just as indicated by the PNRR, as per the prescriptions of the EU Next Generation Recovery Fund. A milestone in terms of opportunities for development – to be defended and rigorously translated into investments and reforms, also and above all in such extremely hard times of crisis.
(foto Getty images)