ABSTRACT
Since the unification of the country and the birth of the nation in 1860 higher education in Italy has been affected by requests and pressures of various kinds. As in almost all centralized systems. education has been used either for social purposes (reproduction of the elites). or for economic reasons (training of labor forces at upper levels), or for political ends (legitimation of the existing ruling class). The alternate prevalence of these purposes has affected the structuring of the higher education system and especially access to it from the upper secondary level. as I will later demonstrate. At the present time, the pressures of social demand for higher education which developed in the 1960s. as in many other European countries, is still visible in the working of the university in Italy. 1
