ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the shortcomings of the Italian university-system reforms, based on academics’ salaries and terms of employment. New rules have been established over the last 20 years, designed to make universities more internationally competitive. The system of recruiting academics has repeatedly been changed, but reforms have failed to modify a highly inflexible wage structure or to introduce a manageable career system. Weak governance has prevented the central bureaucracy and academic management from making real use of the evaluation and assessment procedures introduced recently at both systemic and institutional levels. A new reform package approved at the end of 2010 is designed to deal with those problems inherited from the past and to pursue a more meritocratic system of academic pay and promotion, although some observers remain skeptical about the efficacy of such reforms.
