RIMINI (ITALPRESS) – The Rector of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Elena Beccalli, guest at the Meeting 2026, spoke at the debate “For a young Italy. Ideas and experiences against the discontent of young people.” A comparison with several voices, moderated by prof. Francesco Magni, with the poet Davide Rondoni, with writer Sara Ciafardoni and writer as well as president of the Cultural Association Noce Riccardo Pedicone.
“An alarming figure is that of the demographic winter not only for Italy, but in more general terms for the whole European continent – said Beccalli -. If we look at the number of young people aged between zero and nineteen years for the European Union, the projection is of a loss of about thirty-three million young people here at the end of the century. This gives us the touch of the epochal transformation we are living, which will redesign the social, cultural and also economic-financial foundations of our continent. Inevitably this demographic winter touches the university system because the audience of potential students of European universities is naturally shrinking and the consequences can be really dangerous. In some institutions, not only in our country, but at a European level, we see more and more the manifestation of this phenomenon, of the trap of inscriptions”.
“Pur to fill classrooms, universities or lower university fees or, more dangerously, lower academic standards – he added. This naturally goes to the detriment of the reputation of the university system, a risk that we must absolutely oppose. However, there is a positive note for the system of European Catholic universities: the data is of a holding in the number of registrations where the universities can value their identity. And this means that Catholic universities cannot and must not compete according to the logic of the education market, but instead they must compete on the value, on the quality, on the distinctive traits of their formative paths, based on the universal values of which they are carriers.”.
“So, we have long spoken of this phenomenon of brain escape. But I think it is important to light a spotlight on a very recent figure of Istat on the migration flows of qualified human capital because we see a new trend, a sort of trend reversal,” he said.
“If we look at the period 2019-2024, 78 thousand young Italian graduates have left our country. But in this same time, Italy attracted 88 thousand graduates. This means – he has emphasized the rector – that we are faced with a positive balance of 10 thousand young people and is an extremely important figure, a change of tendency precisely, that brings us today to glimpse the first signs of what we call the circularity of talents, the brain circulation. It is no longer just a phenomenon of escape, but it is also a phenomenon of attraction. It is true that the university system, with its internationally recognized quality, strongly contributes to this attractiveness, but this in itself is not enough. It becomes essential to involve the system of enterprises so that these talents are not only attracted to Italy, but also to be retained. And this applies both to those arriving from abroad and to Italian graduates because we are often faced with a real demotivation of our young people, a distrust towards what we can call the Italian system”.
For Beccalli “the opportunities offered by the world of work are disadvantageous to young people, if compared to seniors. There is a generational gap in the labour market that we have the responsibility to contrast with public policies that encourage the recruitment of skills in the company. This is a fundamental part of the recovery of the competitiveness of the country.” “We unfortunately remember that Italy is still in the lowest positions in terms of the number of graduates on the European continent and that public expenditure in education still suffers from a chronic gap from other countries. I believe that a priority of the political agenda is to realize with strong conviction an extraordinary plan of investments in education, especially secondary and tertiary”, concluded Beccalli.
-Photo IPA Agency-
(ITALPRESS).
