NARIC guide on Higher Education Systems in the European Union

With reference to university autonomy, Article 11 of the Reform Act 341/1990 determines that it is up to the academic senate
of the individual universities, on the advice of the faculty councils concerned, to provide for the curricular organisation of
each degree course at any level. Within the general framework of the national university legislation, therefore, faculty
councils autonomously decide on the typology of subjects to be adopted (if annual or semestral), on study plans with the
traditional subdivision of the disciplines into fundamental ones and electives, on study modules, teaching methodologies, class
attendance, types of exams, criteria for the assessment of their students’ performance, possible introduction of a credit system,
etc.
It seems convenient to illustrate the most typical elements of the various university degree courses considered by study level
and type of degree.
First level studies ( 1 )
These include: (a) corsi di diploma universitario-DU (university diploma courses), (b) courses run by the scuole dirette a fini
speciali-SDAFSs (schools for special purposes), both resulting in the award of a diploma universitario, and (c) scuole di
ostetricia (schools for midwives’ training).
Both DU and SDAFS courses are short-cycle academic studies with a vocational feature, resulting in the award of more or less
professionally-oriented degrees.
In comparison with DU and SDAFS studies, midwives’courses are based on an even more marked professional approach.
The main purpose of all first level studies is to provide students with a type of university education and training which, after
two or — more frequently — three years, may enable them to enter certain professions in the public or private sector.
The holders of DU and SDAFS diplomas may also be admitted to second level studies (corsi di laurea), but, since SDAFS
programmes more particularly emphasise the vocational features of the various disciplines, the relevant university authorities
normally grant a different kind of academic recognition to these two categories of qualifications (see II.3.3).
(a) DU courses
The new DUs have been currently defined as laurea breve by most Italian and foreign mass media; such definition appears
inappropriate when taking into account not so much their length — shorter than that of laurea courses — but the nature and
contents of studies, which, answering to different aims from the laurea sector, are less complex from a theoretical point of
view and more professionally oriented.
The latest statistical data (CIMEA, October 1996) register 664 DU courses, grouped in 102 national types. Being set up by the
relevant university faculties, they cover almost all the basic disciplinary areas such as agriculture, architecture, economics,
engineering, foreign languages, humanities, law, mathematics, medicine and surgery, natural sciences, pharmacy, philosophy,
physics, political science, sociology, veterinary medicine.
All DU courses which have been established so far last three years, full time. As for study organisation, it combines academic
lectures with
practical activities to be regularly distributed over the academic year. Each DU course encompasses a group of obligatory
disciplines, and a number of optional ones, which are left to the student’s choice within a predetermined list. Class attendance
has been made compulsory by most faculties.
According to the legal regulations in force, the basic teaching unit is the module made up of a fixed number of teaching hours,
cover various disciplines. Individual subject courses within a module may be annual or semestral (for details, see description
of CLs under second level studies, in the present section); in practice, a large number of faculties at the various institutions
have adopted the semestral option or even a combination of the two ( 1 ).