The debate centered around two main points: investment in knowledge and human capital, and research and innovation. These two issues are determining factors of growth and competitiveness and together they represent the basic needs to survive, revive the economy and meet the challenges of the future.
In comparison with the rest of the world, the level and the tendencies of the Italian education system and school results are low in the rankings. Then, there is the paradox that higher levels of education do not lead to higher levels of remuneration, which are close to those for lower levels of education. This sets a vicious circle in motion, discouraging investment even though private return rates in Italy are fairly high (9%). The debate covered three questions: the type of human capital in which to invest, when to invest in knowledge and, above all, how to increase investment yield. The job market is increasingly demanding general, transversal, flexible and transferable skills that are neither compartmentalized nor routine. This leads to the growing importance of abilities related to interpersonal relations and business skills, to the capacity to make proposals and adapt, to building and strategically managing highly qualified networks, interdisciplinarity, internationalization and cultural acknowledgement of diversity.
Recently, the creative, cultural and advanced services industries are those that have shown the most growth. Learning curves are already high at a very young age today, even pre-school. Therefore, we have to push back the clock and intensify the process of advance investments. Finally, it is even more urgent to intervene in the quality of education than the quantity. Quality in education is the basis of the entire training, business, social-cultural and family system for the development of strong values and motivation and to overcome the widespread notion that investment in human capital is merely instrumental.
Some basic objectives on which to concentrate were identified. These included a stronger culture of merit (the main incentive for investment), reform of the university system and doctorates, the creation of infrastructures for research, attraction of talent and the return human capital now outside Italy. Others were the increase of an international character of the system more suitable for generating soft skills (such as the use of university campus structures), the elimination of bureaucratic obstacles (such as the difficulties in obtaining visas), adding more informative content and indications in grades and qualifications obtained, more interaction between academe and business and between professions and training. A stronger culture of merit must be accompanied by selection mechanisms (competitions, for example) and construction models for clearer, more transparent roles and careers.
It is also necessary to identify an evaluation and control system that gives more objectives, and more effective results. The university reform should be less centralized and more business-oriented (universities attracting more students will need to find additional resources), as well as a progressive differentiation of the faculties in research and teaching universities. The former, a limited number, should become hubs of excellence dedicated to research and the supply of qualified advanced and doctoral degrees. The latter, a higher number, should be dedicated to top rate professional training. We are not therefore speaking about different priorities or a reduction in the number of faculties, but a diversification of their purpose. The doctorates conferred in Italy are low quality and aimed at reproducing the academic world. It is instead to be hoped that there will be a greater concentration of doctorates earned in a reduced number of top quality institutes and, at the same time, greater synergy between the technological frontier of research and business.
It is also essential to create the conditions to guarantee a brain balance in terms of talent flow, rather than actually trying to eliminate the brain drain. In the field of research, the “SME Districts” model is less up to date and competitive. We need a new generation of policies for research and innovation, more in keeping with the needs and characteristics of the national industrial system, more selective, i.e. with a meritocratic, strategic vision in high potential areas that count on tax incentives and also on a series of inexpensive organizational incentives. Available resources are bound to diminish and low budget support will become more and more necessary, for example through greater efficiency of the assets that the public administration already uses to cover its basic services. This is marked by a primarily bureaucratic-regulatory approach and by a leading class with the kind of formal-legal training that is unsuitable to handle the process of innovation.
There was some discussion on the advisability of creating mixed advisory boards with a catalogue of research know-how and products (facilitating the match between supply and demand) to encourage adding more research personnel to SMEs. This is a new model of innovation, one that is open, seen as an eco-system where all the actors (universities, businesses, banks, banking foundations and NGOs) continuously interact, an eco-system increasingly based on the paradigm of open innovation. Finally, there was a proposal to set up a National Foundation for the Sciences (FNS), i.e. an independent structure that operates according to criteria of international selection, assigning a market of quality to project proposals and redirecting the guidelines for distribution of public financing.