Catching up on Institutional Governance and Assessment: The 2010 Reform and Its Aftermath

After a decade of debate, in 2010 a new law has been approved with the aim to redesign institutional governance as well as some relevant components of systemic governance. The main goals of that law were that of verticalizing institutional governance, of disempowering the collegial bodies and of simplifying the internal organization of universities. However, the first years of its implementation show that these objectives have been met only partly, while a number of unintended consequences have emerged. As regards systemic governance, the new main feature is the ‘excessive’ role that the national Agency for Evaluation of Universities, established in 2011, has come to play. Given the weakness of the ministerial bureaucracy and its inability to steer the university system, this Agency in a sense has become the real systemic policy-maker