Osservatorio
per la valutazione del sistema universitario
Luigi Biggeri - Lucia Scarpitti
Evaluation in the
Italian University System
Reprint del paper presentato
a:
International Conference on Evaluation:
Profession, Business or Politics?
Rome, october, 29-31, 1998
Reprint 3/98 - ottobre 1998
Reprint - File in formato pdf: rep-0398.pdf - 114 kb
Reprint - File in formato
word 7.0: rep-0398.doc - 669 kb
Indice
1.
Introduction: the Development of Autonomy and Evaluation
2. The Need for
an Evaluation System linked to the Planning Process
3. Evaluation in
the Italian University System
4. Examples of
the Organization of the Evaluation Activity Carried Out by the Council
4.1 Ex Post Policy
Evaluation at National Level of the University Development Plans from 1986
to 1993
4.2 Ex Ante Evaluation
at Local Level: State-owned and Non-state-owned Institutions
4.3 Evaluation of
Dividing Overcrowded Universities
4.4 Procedures, Quantitative
and Qualitative Standards to Evaluate the Results Referred to Efficiency
and to the Productivity of the Research and Teaching
Activities
4.5 Technical Proposal
to Establish the Sharing Criteria of the Re-balancing Part of the State
Funding of Universities
5. Concluding remarks
NUEC reports quoted
in the text
1.
Introduction: the Development of Autonomy and Evaluation
Over the last ten
years, significant changes occurred in the Italian public administration
and in particular in the university system in order to develop the decentralization
of the decision-making process and the autonomy of each university: first
of all budget autonomy and, recently, the teaching autonomy of each institution.
The first step towards
Italian university autonomy was taken about ten years ago by Act no. 168/89
establishing the Ministry of University and Scientific and Technological
Research (Murst), which recognized statutory autonomy to universities.
Then with the Decree Law no. 29/93 the budget control and the control of
costs were introduced in all the units of the public administration. In
the same year, the budget autonomy of each university was introduced by
Act no. 537/93, while, in 1997, Act no. 59/97 and Act no. 127/97 took another
significant step toward university autonomy, indicating the elements for
the managing and organization autonomy. The provisions for the implementation
of these acts are passing tasks and responsibility to university. These
tasks and responsibility so far have fallen within this cope of central
bodies’ control. Other measures to widen the autonomy and self-determination
of universities followed. The overall view on the new system will be complete
next year when the experimentation on teaching autonomy is implemented.
The thrust towards
decentralization and autonomy is an essential condition to improve the
managing of the public administration and, in particular, universities.
Yet, in order to accomplish this task the decentralization and autonomy
have to be accompanied by the managing bodies taking real responsibility
for the results that their units reach. They have, as well, to take responsibility
for the evaluation of the activities carried out and results reached, in
terms of efficiency, effectiveness and quality. Autonomy and evaluation,
therefore, are indissolubly bound.
The aim of this paper
is to present the main characteristics and activity of the evaluation in
the university system in Italy pointing out the need for some improvements.
In order to do this, first of all, we recall and explain the importance
of building up a complete system of evaluation linked to the programming-planning
process of the activity (Section 2). Then we describe the characteristics
of the evaluation in the Italian university system (Section 3) and the
National University Evaluation Council (NUEC) experience presenting
specific case-studies and the used methodologies (Section 4). The final
remarks highlight the steps to be followed to improve the present system
of evaluation in the Italian university system.
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aggiornamento: 25/1/99