“The need and possibility of bringing studies down to concrete reality”. The evolution of the Italian university mission and the integration of science and technique

Abstract

Over the course of the 20th century, the Italian academic system underwent significant changes, both in terms
of structure and in relation to its role in the country’s cultural, pedagogical, political, economic and social
processes. In fact, a pivotal issue in the debate on the modernisation of the higher education system has been
the definition of the mission of universities. Drawing upon a relevant contribution by the President of the Fascist
Confederation of Industrialists, Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, which was published in 1940 in the journal «Gli
Annali della Università italiana», this paper aims to reconstruct the most important steps that have led Italian
universities to favour integrating the “knowledge” dimension with that of “technique” and, therefore, to rethink
their structure in order to promote a concrete correspondence between the “traditional” goals of higher education,
local needs and universities’ impact on communities’ civil and socio-economic development.