The Calabrian university system: a local perspective in a European frame by JUMP

JUMP is the Italian partner of CSB Project and represents the South of Italy which is a quite peculiar territory characterised by lower economical standards and a huge unemployment rate. With this article from our new colleague, Bianca Sinopoli, former Law student at UMG in Catanzaro, we want to give an overview of the university offer of young people who live in a poor area. This research is done in the perspective of the development of the dissemination plan at regional level by JUMP.

Calabria is an Italian region in the extreme south of Italy. There are 6 universities, two in Catanzaro, two in Reggio Calabria, one in Cosenza and one in Soverato.

The first university in Catanzaro is the Magna Graecia University (UMG). The Campus is based in Germaneto, a few kms from Catanzaro city.

It's divided into four departments:

1. experimental medicine’s department

2. medical science’s department

3. health science’s department

4. law, economics and sociology’s department

This University guarantees a lot of informatics, linguistic and medical laboratories to all the students, which contain tools from the latest generation. There are also a lot of opportunities in terms of part-time work and scholarship. Moreover it certifies four types of Erasmus programs. Recently the University founded a listening’s center for women in order to promote equality among students. There is also a nursery school near the University for the employee’s children to conciliate work and private life.

The second university in Catanzaro is the Academy of Fine Arts (ABA) that oversees the visions’s art study.

This Academy issues eleven degrees:

1. Decoration

2. Graphic design

3. Graphic/ illustration

4. Painting

5. Scenic design

6. Sculpture

7. Video editing

8. Fashion Design

9. Jewellery Design

10. Computer Games

11. Pedagogy’s art

In Reggio Calabria there is the University of Mediterranean studies (UNIRC), the first university founded in Calabria in 1968 .

Today the university is divided into six department:

1. Agriculture’s department

2. Architecture and territory’s department (dArTe)

3. Heritage, architecture and urbaristic’s department (PAU)

4. Law and economics department (DiGeC)

5. Civil, energy, environment and material’s engineering department (DICEAM)

6. Information, infrastructure and eco-friendly energy’s department (DIIES)

The athenaeum invests every year around one hundred scholarship for Erasmus students to study abroad, in Aachen, Aalborg, Athens, Barcelona, Budapest, Cadiz, Dabrowa Górnicza, Gran Canaria, Granada, Grenoble, La Coruna, Leuven, Lisbon, Lublin, Madrid, Málaga, Marseille, Montpellier, Murcia, Newcastle, Oldenburg, Paris, Piraeus, Tampere, San Sebastián, Santiago de Compostela, Sivil, Valladolid, Viana do Castelo, Vienna and Volos.. Since two years, every summer a lot of academic trips with the St. Andrews University in Scotland are organized.

Another University in Reggio is the “Dante Alighieri” University for Foreigners which offers a study program about sciences and society of Italy. The peculiar department was born for foreigners to learn about Italian culture and history.

Another main University is the “University of Calabria” (UniCal) founded in 1972 situated in Arcavacata, in Rende (CS), in the north of Calabria.

There are fourteen departments:

1. Biology

2. Chemistry

3. Culture and education

4. Economics, statistic and finance

5. Pharmacy

6. Physics

7. Environmental engineering

8. Civil engineering

9. Informatics engineering

10. Mechanical engineering

11. Maths and computer science

12. Business economy

13. Politics and social economy

14. Humanistic studies

Unical has the biggest campus of Calabria. In the Athenaeum there are four museums: the Palaeontology museum, the museum of natural history, the zoology’s museum and the museum for the environment. Also to promote the internationalisation of the campus it started a program based on the cultural exchange with more than 240 universities from all over the world . The economy’s department represents an important point of reference for all the universities in Calabria because it started the same year when the Unical was instituted.

The last University in Calabria is the “Don Giorgio Pratesi Institute” in Soverato supported by the Southern Salesian’s Inspectorate “Beato Michele Rua” from 2014. It's a private University offering just the faculty of science of formation. In Soverato there are two main Institutes managed by Salesian where secondary school students can prepare for University attending or the linguistic lyceum or the human sciences lyceum or the classical studies lyceum.

In general it's part of the Calabrian tradition the presence of Catholic schools because in the past they were the only ones but nowadays we can say that the region from North to South offers a wide range of opportunities for students. One of the main problems of this area has always been the huge migration of young people to study and work in other cities or Countries. Things have changed in the last years, fortunately: especially UMG and UNICAL increased their presence at international level, thanks to Erasmus and to bigger appeal of the region for foreigners.

Of course, in world or European rankings the competition is very high and we hope that with the project "Cultural Studies in Business", Jump association as Calabrian partner can develop soon dissemination activities bringing results and the pilot course also here.

Due to COVID 19 plans changed and multiplier events planned in spring time were postdated but from October, JUMP will spread the idea of a pilot course to be activated also in Catanzaro and in Cosenza. University policies are slow and without a EU project which finance also to Calabrian universities the same as it was done for the 6 partners universities of CSB project, it is quite difficult that also in Calabria a real pilot course can be started in 2020 or 2021. But a project plants seeds and our territory is still vergin in terms of innovation and internationalization. We count to start a new process for a future development of CSB also here!

The JUMP Team

Article written by Bianca Sinopoli, former law student at the "Magna Grecia" University of Catanzaro (UMG) and member of the JUMP Team, supervised by Erika Gerardini, project responsible for JUMP.