Competences and Tertiary Education in Italy: Challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Rosario Ponziano
University of Calabria

Abstract

The advent of the fourth industrial revolution (or Industry 4.0) is more and more making more necessary to approach the centrality of the technological element to the value of the human being. The ongoing transformations inside the production systems of businesses, thanks to the most recent technology innovations (Big Data, IoT, Machine Learning, etc.), involve the educational processes and, particularly, the system of tertiary education which, especially in Italy, shall have to guarantee, to young people, the possibility of gaining new skills, in order for them to adapt themselves to those scenarios which constantly change. Nevertheless, as it emerges from this paper, Italian tertiary education is too unbalanced on university paths, which are little connected with the world of work and, in particular, with the new working reality, whereas ITS (Higher Technical Institutes), which have been created in order to train professional figures capable of better meeting the request for skills 4.0, are still a niche phenomenon.


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