Governance Reforms in Comparative Perspective and Their Path in the Italian Case

Reforming governance in higher education has been a kind of mantra that has characterised governmental policies worldwide. Under the pressure of massification, globalisation and socio-economic demands, governments have continuously intervened to redesign the characteristics of the governance arrangements of their higher education systems as well as institutional governance. This common effort has been characterised by the adoption of a common template (i.e. the ‘steering at a distance’ model), mainly based on the idea of making universities more accountable to the societal goals through the massive use of evaluation, assessment and monitoring. The final results are highly differentiated, owing to the fact that each country has implemented a common template according to its own national characteristics and legacies. In this context, the Italian case shows its own peculiarities, whereas evaluative tools have been significantly adopted in a design highly contradictory of other dimensions such as institutional governance, the rules of careers and academic recruitment and the lack of clear systemic goals to be reached.