NARIC guide on Higher Education Systems in the European Union

Second level studies ( 1 )
Corsi di laurea — CL
Consisting exclusively of laurea degree courses, second level studies are intended for the students to acquire cultural,
scientific and methodological knowledge at a higher level so that, thanks to deep theoretical investigation of the most varied
questions and initial training in research, they may subsequently take up greater professional responsibilities.
Altogether, the CLs presently set up at the various university sites are 1181, covering 87 national types (CIMEA, October
1996).
As a rule, the legal length of CLs is four to five years (full time), depending on individual faculties and study courses; only for
the faculty of medicine and surgery does the duration fixed by law amount to six years. The tendency has recently emerged to
extend the length of some CLs in order to grant new recruits the necessary basic culture along with deeper academic
education. With such a view in mind, in recent years a reorganisation of some curricula took place, according to which certain
four-year CLs were transformed into five-year ones.
All educational activities are still officially organized by academic years, each beginning on 1 November and ending on 31
October of the following year; but quite a number of faculties at the different university sites have definitively adopted the
semestral system, especially in the case of medical, scientific and technological degree courses. As a consequence, the
subjects taught in corsi annuali (annual courses) start classes in early November and finish at the end of May, whereas classes
of subjects taught in corsi semestrali (semestral courses) meet from mid-September to January (first semester) and from
February to mid-June (second semester).
As concerns annual courses, classes usually meet three hours per week. In the case of corsi semestrali compattati o intensivi
(compact or intensive semestral courses), teaching is compressed into just one semester by doubling the weekly timetable
(five to six weekly contact hours or more), so that total contact hours and syllabuses dealt with may correspond to those of
annual courses.
There are also semestral courses based on three contact hours per week, as is customary in other countries: the CL in
agronomy, for instance, is modelled on the most common semestral pattern, i.e. in teaching modules smaller than the
traditional annual subject courses; following to one of the recent rearrangements, the same change has also occurred in the
six-year CL in medicine and surgery.
The most common teaching method is that of traditional lectures, but classes may also take place in the form of seminars on
restricted subject matters related to an individual discipline, of esercitazioni (activities consisting of the application of rules
and principles for the solution of specific problems), laboratory practice, etc. By their practical and applied aspect, seminars
and esercitazioni form a useful support the theoretical notions of a specific course; at the same time, seminars also promote
the students’ training in scientific research.
Class attendance is often optional, even if it is strongly recommended especially in the case of scientific and technological
subjects, since it eventually becomes indispensable for success in the related examinations.
The regolamento didattico di ateneo (university teaching regulations) — that is to say the whole of the legal dispositions
regulating the organisation and development of each degree course at each individual institution ( 1 ) — fixes the length of each
CL, defines as annualità ( 2 ) the complete number of courses necessary for the attainment of the final degree, determines the
subdivision between the courses regarded as fondamentali, whose exams are compulsory, and complementari, that is optional,
which comprise the study plan. As in the case of DU courses, students may choose to follow the official study plans, advised
by the faculties concerned, or to formulate their personal ones: by 31 December every year, the latter are to be submitted to
the proper faculty council for approval.