After the interview with the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti, Anna Maria Bernini, Director of the University and Research. The representative of the Meloni government, interviewed by the director Franco Bechis and by the students of the University of Parma, makes a comment on research and the brain drain. “The gold of our country is culture, training, higher education. We do not withdraw resources from the 'mines'”, he says. “We work a lot on research, never enough. But we are at a good point, we invest both national funds and those of the PNRR in research. And we must create research infrastructures that allow brains to go, to come back and to bring other brains to our country.” For the minister, the goal is therefore to bring back researchers. And to do this, “we must offer research places, not just tax breaks. “If you don't give them a scientific community to come together around, a PC and a room are not enough.”
The funds
“Research funds will not be enough if we fail to recover our brains.” Regarding funds, Bernini specifies, “there are 11 billion more for research, which is a lot for us, given by the Pnrrr, to put where? Not to make current expenses, but to make investments. We have involved universities, research organizations, companies and local authorities in the infrastructures.” What is essential, for the minister, is to bring brains back to Italy.
Distance learning and the brake on online universities
“I don't want to give gifts to online universities, but I want to give them rules,” explains Bernin, speaking of the proliferation of digital and distance learning courses. “Covid has forced us to do things that we didn't do before, we have had a kind of advance, even technological, we have started to communicate, to train differently. We cannot ignore the fact that there is innovative teaching, accessible not only to online universities but also to traditional universities. We are building common solutions on this, I have to regulate the quality of the training offer,” he emphasizes.
For Minister Bernini, “the university should be a bit of everything, it should train people for professions that in part do not exist”, she said, answering questions from the students of the University of Parma present in the square. “We must learn to horizontalize our profession – he continued – to project it into the future. What I am trying to do, while respecting university autonomy, is to orient universities towards interdisciplinarity. The intersection of hard sciences (STEM) and human sciences is therefore the winning recipe.”
Bernini modifies the “Gelmini reform”
“Yesterday I signed a decree to modify the Gelmini reform,” Bernini explains, also specifying that “it was necessary to adapt it to the contemporary.” Also because “currently 40% of Italian students benefit from scholarships and universities are doing everything they can to increase the number of students enrolled. This mechanism had created a short circuit that had to be repaired,” he says.
Some universities should “federate”
Furthermore, for Bernini, universities “are too many”. “Politics – he explains – has decided to create a university for each territory: it is not possible. Because often – he continues – there are more professors than students. I cannot tell them to close, but to federate. I can encourage them to federate. There is no point in competing and wasting funds”, he says. On the housing crisis, Bernini has no doubts: “Bed places are a tragedy, a real tragedy. In 50 years of republican history, a total of 40,000 beds have been created. Which are insufficient. My predecessor, with the Pnrr, committed us all to reaching 60 thousand by 2026. And 40 thousand plus 60 thousand are enough. But we must think of immediate solutions”, he explains.
Artificial Intelligence and Universities
For the minister, there must always be “the person” at the center of artificial intelligence. “Our universities are not all the same – explains Bernini -, a bit like us. Each university has its number: there are the Polytechnics, then other general universities that have different training offers.” But all, he emphasizes, “must deal with technology.” And “artificial intelligence – he continues – must not be a dictatorship of the algorithm. We must create – as Mgr Paglia explains – an ethics of algorithms: there is always the person at the center, who programs the algorithms and evaluates the quality of the data. AI is a crazy detonator of human intelligence – concludes Bernini -, but what comes out of it is the human who evaluates it. Upstream and downstream of AI, there must always be the person.”
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