Fundamental purpose. University studies.

Fundamental purpose

University studies.

At present, the university studies of every country in the world have as their main goal the vocational training, with one or more levels, depending also on the traditions of individual countries. In Italy, until the last reform of university studies, officially entered into force only recently, there was, or rather was, in fact recognized, a single level of university education, as the University Diploma has always had little consideration, both academically and In the world of work. The professional title was obtained at the end of a cycle of studies, which, depending on the faculty, had an official duration of four to six years. For the engineering faculty, that time was five years. Today over 6 years.

The characterization of university studies has not always been the case for vocational training everywhere. Therefore, in order to better understand the events that will be referred to, it will be useful to have some indication of what the University Study meant in the past centuries. "University" is commonly understood as the structure and institution, scientific, educational and cultural, which is the highest level of education in a country. With this term, however, centuries ago, from the Middle Ages, Corporations or other associations of economic and commercial character were also identified. To avoid confusion, we would like to point out that, referring to Universities of the past, we mean the universities of higher education. Where this is a corporation, it will be specified.

In the Universities of the Middle Ages, together with Sacred Scripture, Theology and Philosophy, they taught Law, Medicine and Liberal Arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music). The Universities of the Middle Ages were the prestige of the great university centers of Europe: Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, Vienna, Erfurt, Cologne, Basel, Leuven, Hanover, Budapest, Krakow, Prague, Coimbra, Vilnius, Uppsala, Copenhagen. They formed jurists, lawyers, notaries, theologians, clerics, that is, civil and ecclesiastical leaders. In Italy university studies were born as a corporation or masters (universitas magistrorum) or rather than schoolchildren (universitas scholarium), and thus with a real autonomy. But in Naples, the Studio arose for the will of the sovereign with readers appointed and salaried by him, and with complete dependence on the State. The Studio is a state school of the same kind, and is kept alive both to feed the Culture, both to get that number of doctors and lawyers that is needed in the country. (Nino Cortese, The Spanish Age, in "History of the University of Naples" - Anastatic reprint, Il Mulino 1993). The reader of the Medieval University was, except for a few exceptions to Naples, an independent professional of knowledge, inserted into an autonomous corporation and solidarity with his colleagues (see M. Roggero: History of Italy, Annals 4, p.1039 -1081, Einaudi 1981).

In the second half of the sixteenth century, following the schism from the development of Protestantism, the Catholic Church, after the work of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), reorganized in a capillary and rigorous manner control over many aspects of philosophical and literary culture. It resulted from a general crisis of intellectual and power relations, involving the university corporation of Italian universities. Crisis that was destined to drag on for a long time without solutions, because it was also linked to the reduction in the financial availability of universities, as the real revenue of royalties tied to teaching by authorities and benefactors had diminished. For example, in Bologna in 1668, the Senate, who could no longer cope with wages with old Gabella's old income, suspended new appointments (of teachers), reducing the number of readers by more than a third. Only during the eighteenth century there would have been a fundamental change in a thousand difficulties. From the disintegration of traditional reference frameworks, with renewed fortune, forms of private teaching emerged. One of the most frequent cases was the knotting of a privileged relationship between the young university and a professor who led him through the studies ..... The process involving university institutions, accentuating the importance of degrees with respect to teaching , contributed to altering the internal power relations in favor of the professional colleges, which controlled the conferral of degrees. The composition of colleges ranged from university to university. Sometimes they coincided, as in Pisa, with the faculty; Otherwise, as in Naples, they were professional bodies completely independent of the Studio (see M. Roggero, cited above). It is thus understood that, as far as the seventeenth and eighth centuries are concerned, the notion of University Study has considerable vagueness. If any such institute is capable of denigrating, the range of these is wide and differentiated; Besides the studies in their own sense, of communal or noble origin, with intermittent activity and little studied, they were enabled to teach (in philosophy and sometimes in law) several Jesuit colleges, while medical degrees were assigned by bodies such as Doctoral Colleges and Protomedicals, at the end of special professional courses set up at local level, or simple private studios (Ugo Baldini: Scientific Activity in the Eighteenth Century, History of Italy - Annals 3, p.465-545, Einaudi 1981). Only towards the second half of the eighteenth century the attributes of high professionalism would have characterized the professor of a renewed university, as an official at the service of the State, and the University would have come to an organization and an order comparable to those we know today, The reforms begun at the University of Turin in the 1920s (18th century) and even more so with the one promoted by Maria Teresa d'Austria at the University of Pavia, which foresight of political project and the dullness of cultural renewal .... Would have surpassed each other (vM Roggero, cited above).

To have an idea, albeit partial, what it meant, at least in Naples, the University of Studies in the early decades of the eighteenth century, it is worth what Michelangelo Schipa wrote in his contribution to the volume, already cited, "History of the University Of Naples ": The tenth century. So Schipa writes: Neither students, nor professors were called then; But schoolchilds ... the readers, the readers, because in one half of the lesson we read text, theology, law, medicine; For the other half it was explained or commented. ..... For various reasons the university school was not large. There was no aristocratic element at all, because the noble families looked good to send their children to that "all kinds of turbulence" as the school school was considered and designated. The bourgeois youth of the provinces did not come in much to save on spending and for other reasons. The university was preparing for the degree, but it did not confer the degree ............... Those academic degrees were conferred in the colleges, theological, legal, medical, by the members of the colleges. It is true that in order to be admitted to the exam in the Collegiums it was necessary to display the enrollment and attendance certificates for many years of the course required by the various PhDs. But that obligation imposed by the pragmatics, in Naples no longer valid than Milan's cries of Manzon's memory, was easily evaded. At the head of the university was a prefect, and it was by law the prefect of the university the chief chaplain pro tempore. Who, engaged in many other affairs, delegated with a few ducats a year a Rector << to attend all day at Studio >>; And to help the Rector nominated a Vicerector among the school-leavers with formalities. At that moment, the mastrodati for chaplain was about to release the enrollment and frequency bands at a time to the young man who asked for it, swearing and paying the tax: a tax fixed by law, but grew up in time for the arbitration of past mastrings.And the tax was what most importantly mattered; Money was paid, the mastrodati noted the name in his register, and handed over the document, without worrying if the applicant was the person concerned ... In this way he could stay in the homeland and be a student of the capital. The Neapolitan University finally ... was not made to attract young people in vogue to learn in the crowd. .... And the discipline? Keeping her was to guard not only the Rector and the Viceroy School, but according to the prams also a captain of guard justice with her beers in the university lobby ..... The prammatics prescribing the readers the duration of the lessons, but, for a variety of reasons, readers remained as little as possible ... Like the name of the Vico, some of the few high and good fame in various fields of the scibile were among the thirty teachers of those years. Only seven at the esteem of students ......... In the faculty of medicine two famous professionals, Luca Tozzi doctor and Luca Antonio Porzio surgeon, rushed to the city and left to make lessons from substitutes .... ... Among the theologians, many ... planted the chair for two months of the year to go to the quaresimalists in the provinces ..... the rest was ballast of mediocre and inept, listened to by some rare school. Competition and grace were the doors to which unfortunate or disgruntled readers were knocking over to switch from one chair to another, not so much because of reason or conscience of greater competence than to gain greater earnings. Because of the many diversity of titles, dignity and rights, the enormous disproportion of salaries was the most burning.

Sources for research: Sources for research: volume "THE ENGINEERING SCHOOL IN NAPLES 1811-1967" (edited by Giuseppe Russo, published on the occasion of the transfer of the Faculty of Engineering from Mezzocannone to the new buildings of Fuorigrotta).

Publication rapporteur: Prof. Lelio Della Pietra (Mechanics Applied to Machines, Federico II, Engineering, Naples)..