The university in the knowledge-based society: a comparative empirical study

Giorgio G. Maggiacomo
Alma Mater Studiorum Universit di Bologna

Abstract
This paper aims to explore the contents of social representations, beliefs and attitudes
associated to university. Keeping in reference the guidelines of the European Commission of recent
years on the reforms of higher education systems, we conducted a comparative study on two
European systems, the Italian and the French one. To do this, we called to respond the students who
are among the stakeholders of the changes that have occurred in recent years. This is because the
European Commission decided to establish a new form of economy that can make Europe the
biggest economic power, that is a knowledge-based economy. In this context, university seems to
play a key role, being the heart of the scientific research and training. Even more so if, as required
by the Triple Helix Model (Etzkowitz, 1983), university establishes a close connection with
businesses to produce innovations that need to territory development. Following the Abrics
structural approach (1993) to the study of social representations, and the model of Osgood, Suci and
Tannenbaum on the measurement of attitudes (1957), data analyses revealed that there are
significant differences between Italian and French students to the dimensions investigated.
Information achieved added a dowel to the survey on youth, education and culture, provided by the
European Commission (2011), on the students perception of the higher education reforms.
Il presente lavoro si propone di esplorare i contenuti delle rappresentazioni sociali, le
credenze e latteggiamento associati alluniversit. Tenendo a riferimento le direttive della
Commissione Europea degli ultimi anni per le riforme dei sistemi universitari, abbiamo condotto
uno studio comparativo su due sistemi europei, quello italiano e quello francese. Per farlo,
abbiamo chiamato a rispondere gli studenti, che sono tra i diretti interessati dei cambiamenti che
sono intervenuti negli ultimi anni. Questo perch la Commissione Europea ha deciso di fondare
una nuova forma di economia, che possa rendere lEuropa la potenza economica pi grande,
uneconomia dunque basata sulla conoscenza. In questo contesto, luniversit sembra avere un
ruolo chiave, essendo il cuore della ricerca scientifica e della formazione permanente. Ancora di
pi se, come previsto dal modello della Triplice Elica (Etzkowitz, 1983), instaura un legame stretto
di scambio con le aziende per produrre quellinnovazione che serve allo sviluppo del territorio.
Seguendo lapproccio strutturale di Abric (1993) allo studio delle rappresentazioni sociali, e il
modello di Osgood, Suci e Tannenbaum (1957) sulla misura degli atteggiamenti (1975), lanalisi
dei dati raccolti ha rivelato che sussistono differenze significative tra studenti italiani e francesi
alle dimensioni indagate. Le informazioni qui ottenute aggiungono quindi un tassello importante
allindagine della Commissione Europea (2011) sulle percezioni degli studenti delle riforme dei
sistemi universitari.

Key words: attitudes, beliefs, innovation, social representations, university.

Introduction

The role of the university and the reforms of the academic system
Nowadays several reforms involved the European social context, with a focus on the
innovation as a key-word for the future and an objective to reach in every field. This took to an
internal redefinition of all the member states to be compliant with the guidelines. As established by
the European Commission in 2003, the main purposes of these changes have been to fight poverty
and social exclusion, create new skills and fulfill careers, as well as to improve the life chance of
young people. At the same way, reforms wanted to get Europe the most competitive and dynamic
knowledge-based economy in the world (European Commission, 2003). Thus, a plan of economic
and social restructuring has been designed, focusing primarily on three main assumptions: a smart,
sustainable and inclusive growth (European Commission, 2010), as proposed by the Europe 2020
program. Growth should be more related to an improvement of education, research and new digital
technologies. At the same way, this would create new spaces for new jobs, improve the existing
ones, investing completely on training and development of transversal and specific skills.
The European Community actually believes that the economies in the contemporary age
depend a lot on the production and diffusion of knowledge. Hence, in order to develop even more
its role in driving innovation and knowledge, university should have to invest especially on two
main areas: scientific research and training.
The Bologna Process contributed to change the European scenario through substantial
reforms of the academic systems. It encouraged European universities to align their education
systems in every different country, promoting mobility, lifelong learning and internationalization.
We are now assisting to a transformation from a truth-oriented form of knowledge to a usefulnessoriented one, where useful is in relation to the labor market and the economic development of the
environment. Therefore a third important mission of university is specified in promoting a useful
relationship with the territory and enterprises. This is actually the core idea of the Triple Helix
Model (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1995; 2000) which explains a stringent relationship between
academic world, industry and government, as the power of the knowledge-based society.
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(Etzkowitz, Webster, Gebhardt, & Terra, 2000). University should play an entrepreneurial role,
thanks to economic investments in applied researches with implications for closer territory,
promotion of excellent academic institutions and especially performances evaluation of every
university in order to support the better ones (Coniglione, 2013). More in deep, the cooperation
between these organizations should become necessary, to ensure system persistence, maintaining
the purpose to be a great economic power. Institutions of research, like universities, should actually
cooperate with industries, in a relationship whereas the latters should elicit the formers to focus its
researches on the market needs. In turn the government should support universities both with
resources, and creating a norms system to facilitate that cooperation.
Recent reforms of the educational systems were focused first of all on the objective to make
them as uniform as possible, following the European guidelines. Secondly, reforms wanted to allow
students, teachers and researchers from across the EU to be able to easily get in communication,
exchange important information for the scientific community and work together to maximize the
diffusion of their products. Anyway, nowadays the organization of courses and teaching methods
still vary from country to country.
Key points of this important transformational process have been briefly summarized by Berning
(2013): easier to compare qualifications within the Community; standard structure of the
educational system involving two degree courses (respectively Bachelor and Master), which may be
followed by a third step of higher specialization, the Ph.D.; the European Credit Transfer System
(ECTS); free access to study in all the European universities for both students and teachers and
researchers, thanks to mobility programs and internationalization; opportunity to use standard tools
to assess services and teaching quality across the Community; finally, lifelong learning.
All of this generated an open and free European space with coherent and easy-to-compare
systems: the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).
Recently, a survey was conducted by the European Commission in 2011 in order to explore
students opinions about those themes very related to the reforms. The survey focused on the
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attractiveness of training and higher education, youth mobility, perceptions about finding a job and
desiring to set up a business. In general, results from that survey showed that students from Turkey,
Iceland and Norway think that higher education is an attractive option for their training, whereas
students from Greece, Italy and France think exactly the opposite, that is the higher education is not
an attractive possibility. The idea of improving our own job possibilities is considered generally as
the first reason in choosing to follow a higher education training. Unfortunately, the majority of
students surveyed were worried for the absence of job in their country.
To summarize, the present research aims to explore the beliefs that students developed on
university and try to figure out which position they took on it. This will provide a sort of
photography of what university is for the public opinion, stimulating a virtual comparison to what it
was in the past and what it may become in the future. We examined in depth the Italian and French
university system as examples of two different European countries, for what concerns their
management of the educational field.
To do this, we chose to use the lens of the social representations, which can be considered as
one of the most important fields of study in social psychology, built in order to explain how human
beings perceive and organize the complex reality. They would reply to the question: How do we
manage our knowledge on the world? and How do we share that knowledge with others?. Social
representations actually play a significant role for knowing and sharing the objects of the world, as
well as for understanding the closer reality around us. They organize everyday experience, orienting
behaviors and generating a values system, shared by the whole social environment (Rouquette &
Rateau, 1998). In particular, we used Abrics structural approach (1993), which studies the
cognitive structure of the representations, considering them as composed by two main systems: the
central core and the peripheral system, as we will explain better later on.

The Italian university system

In Italy university is considered a center of higher education, which comes after the high
school diploma. It is organized in Schools for every knowledge domain and it is an institution
(which can be public or private) to provide training and research.
Reforms took shape of the Legislative Decree 240/2010, more commonly known as Riforma
Gelmini, named after the Minister of Education, University and Research (MIUR) of that time. It
wanted to act, first of all, in order to reorganize university system and simplifying its internal
structure (Lombardinilo, 2013). Especially, it provided for a reorganization going along with
principles like simplicity, efficiency, effectiveness, transparency of administration and
accessibility of information" (L. 240/2010).
Particularly, reforms resulted in the disappearance of Faculties and establishment, in their
place, of the Schools that, unlike before, can coordinate only a limited number of Departments;
strong reduction of degree courses; free mobility of teachers and researchers all over the territory
(up to a maximum of 5 years renewal). Moreover the Italian university system has been organized
in order to match the European guidelines, that it structured in three different training cycles.
(Bachelor, Master and Ph.D./Specialization).
The European survey (European Commission, 2011) mentioned before reported that in Italy
students tend to consider higher education as an important way to improve their job opportunities.
On the other hand, they dont see university as very attractive and reported the lower scores to
attractiveness dimension. If we look at the responses to the job opportunities we will see that Italian
students actually think that in their country there are not good job opportunities, jobs are very
poorly paid and these represent the major worries for the future. Also, they dont show an attitude to
set up their own business, comparing to French and Greek students, and to work abroad.

The French university system

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In the French Law, the university is a particular kind of cultural, scientific and professional
public institution, accessible after the Baccalaurat (which is the French high school Diploma), and
includes the National Polytechnics Institutes (Article L711-21) from 2000. Nowadays, as it was
defined by the French Education Code (L. 1199/2007), the main mission of that public institution
can be summarized through these following key-points: lifelong learning; scientific research; job
placement; knowledge and culture diffusion; international cooperation; participation in building the
European Higher Education Area (EHEA), as Bologna Process established.
The main reform, whose acronym is LMD (Rforme Licence-Master-Doctorat), started in 2002
with a series of several decrees (e.g. L.D. 481/2002; L.D. 482/2002). The LMD reform changed the
original French university system, introducing about the same changes introduced in the Italian one,
which are: Bachelor-Master-Doctorate (BMD) structure; the ECTS; the introduction of the Diploma
Supplement, a document to facilitate the international recognition of personal qualifications.
Moreover, the reform focused on encouraging international mobility, as well as on exchanging
important and interesting information about scientific research and innovation between researchers
all over the EU, and on improving transversal skills, like mastery of European languages.
Results from the European Commission survey (2011) revealed that French students share
with the Italian ones the low attractiveness attributed to the higher education, even if they also share
the fact that this should provide them an improvement of job opportunities. On the other hand, they
also think that there are not many job possibilities and that they might move elsewhere to find a job.
Differently, the French seem to be more prepared to set up their own business, so this could let them
more responsive in a time of crisis. In this regard, most recent news from French magazines
confirmed the intention of the French university to be a tipping point for the enterprise (Brafman &
Rey-Lefebvre, 2014).
Method

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006071191&idArticle=LEGIARTI0000
06525323&dateTexte=20121002

Aims and expected results

Among researches on social representations, it is easier to find articles about different
approaches in describing social representations and their function, than to find which practical
implications they can have in increasing knowledge on the social environment. Easily we found
papers on the social representations of the economy (Vergs & Bastounis, 2001) or of the job
(Depolo & Sarchielli, 1983) but no one on the representation of university.
The present field of study wants to be a new open challenge. In particular here we aim to
answer principally to the following questions: What are the contents of students social
representation of university and what are the elements included in the central core of that
representation? What are the beliefs categories that students have about this great institution? What
is students attitude toward the university?
We think that these dimensions are a consequence of the experience and personal
background (human, familiar, professional). Since the social context is critical in determining
beliefs and social representations, it seems intuitive to think that they will not be exactly the same in
different countries of European Community, like Italy and France.
Therefore, our hypotheses are:
H1: since social representations are influenced by the environment (Joedelet, 1989;
Moscovici, 1989; Rouquette & Rateau, 1998), we expect elements in common in the contents of the
representation for students belonging to same community, which is the European Community in
this case;
H1.1: consequently, beliefs and attitudes shared by the groups will report a structure
quite similar: students opinions will be included in a shared system of beliefs; students position
taken toward the university will be quite the same for both groups considered.

H2: nevertheless, since social representations are also influenced by the proximal context
and ideologies (Rouquette & Rateau, 1998; Rateau, 2000) built by the own reference group, we
7

expect differences due to different social contexts, like it can happen in different country inside the
same EU;
H2.1: consequently, beliefs categories could differ in the impact on students
opinions, as well as differences in students attitudes.
H3: since representations, attitudes and beliefs are related between each other and influence
each other (Moliner & Tafani, 1997; Rateau et al., 2011), beliefs categories and attitudes will
correlate among each other in a configuration of mutual influence, and they may vary depending on
the students experience.

Sample and instrument

Our sample includes students of several Italian and French universities (N = 296). The total
amount contains in turn two subsamples, which refer to the different nationalities: the Italians (n =
173) and the French (n = 123). In general, we got students from different fields of study (e.g.
Medicine, Psychology, Economy, Engineering, Law, etc.) and from different ages (M = 22.8, range:
18 34). Students have been recruited both in a face-to-face way, and by internet.
We used a questionnaire already used for a previous research to investigate opinions and
knowledge about university (Longavita, 2012), divided in two main parts.
The first can be divided more in three main areas:
(1) evocations tasks to University word-target,
(2) semantic differential to measure the attitude,
(3) questions on the beliefs about university and its roles, with Likert scales responses.
The second includes 13 closed-response items to measure the degree of knowledge that
students have about their university system.
Then the questionnaire was translated in French and adapted to the French system.
Data analysis

All analytical techniques were performed by using IBM SPSS Statistics Data Editor 21 and
EVOC 2000. In general, missing data analyzed in SPSS have been changed with the corresponding
mean scores; otherwise missing data in EVOC 2000 have been excluded.
EVOC 2000 was used to get evocations analysis (e.g. see Vergs, Tyszka, & Vergs, 1994)
to determine the main contents of the social representation. This actually takes into account how
many times each word is evoked (Frequency) and its salience (Mean Rank). The most evoked
words with lower mean rank are the most salient words shared by the majority of the subjects, so
they belong to the central core of the representation, according to Abric (1993). Words with lower
frequency and higher mean rank are the less shared and salient words, so they belong to the
peripheral system of the representation.
Thus, firstly we screened the whole set of quoted words, then we calculated frequency and
mean rank of each one, finally we established a cut-off line to discriminate among the words and to
report them: 10% for frequency (e.g. see Liguori, Galli, Vergs & Nastas, 2011), whereas the
threshold for mean rank was calculated directly from the software.
Otherwise SPSS was used for the rest of data analyses: exploratory factor analyses, T-test
and correlations.
Items on the role and objectives of university were factor analyzed in order to find beliefs
categories which could let us explain better the total variance of the responses. Exploratory factor
analysis was performed by using varimax rotation and considering factors with eigenvalues > 1.
Taking into account factors saturation and their relation with items, factors have been named.
Likewise, adjectives in the semantic differential were factor analyzed with varimax rotation and,
according to Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaums model (1957) three factors have been extracted. For
each scale Cronbachs alpha has been calculated.
In a second stage, we used T-test in an attempt to find if significant differences occurred
between scores to beliefs and attitude among Italians and French. This has been made in order to
verify H1.1 and H2.1.
9

Finally, correlations analysis has been performed between factors extracted. Pearson
correlations coefficients were used to specify the relationships between variables in order to verify
H3.

Results
Evocations analysis

10

Results for the whole sample showed a vocabulary of 365 words on a total of 1131 words
(M = 3.9 words per subject) with a mean rank of 2,7. Words quoted at least by 10 subjects are 23,
so they could be considered as the 6.3% of the vocabulary, and they have been repeated 575 times,
that is the 50.8% of all the words quoted. Thus the central core of the social representation is
defined by the following contents: Knowledge, Courses, Training, Research and Studying. Also,
next to these we find Job.
Furthermore, analyses have been conducted separately (Tab.1, Appendix). Italian students
vocabulary counts 210 evoked words on a total of 625 words (M = 3.6 words per subject) with a
mean rank of 2.5. Words quoted at least by 10 subjects are 11 (6.2% of the vocabulary) and they
have been repeated 285 times (45.6% of all the words quoted). In that case the central core of the
representation (mean rank < 2.5, percentage frequency 10%) includes Knowledge, Culture,
Training, Commitment, Research and Studying. And next to these we also find Exams and Job.
On the other side French students vocabulary counts 197 evoked words on a total of 506
words (M = 4.4 words per subject). Words quoted at least by 10 subjects are 11 (5.6% of the
vocabulary) and they have been repeated 174 times (34.4 % of all the words quoted). The central
core of the representation is formed by Autonomy, Courses, Job and Studies, with Auditorium,
Learning and Research in the first periphery. These results validate in part H1.

Exploratory factor analyses and semantic differential analysis

The exploratory factor analysis conducted in the whole sample (N = 296) on the questions
on the beliefs about university revealed a 4-factors structure, which explained 55.8% of the total
variance.
The first factor includes loadings of 5 items referring to the contextual factors and the labor
market ( = .78). The second factor extracted includes loadings of 5 items with content referring to
learning and improvement of knowledge ( = .75). Still, the third factor includes 4 items which

11

refer to the relationship between universities and territorial structures ( = .72). The fourth factor
includes loadings of 3 items referring to the financial support provided by the State ( = .65).
In order to simplify discussion, we named these factors in the following manner: (1) Job and
context; (2) Knowledge improvement; (3) Territory; (4) Financial support. These are the most
representative categories of beliefs. For further analyses were going to consider only the factors
with > .60, because they are reliable enough.
The exploratory factor analysis was repeated to analyze the semantic differential. According
to Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaums model (1957) three factors have been extracted, explaining
56.1% of the total variance, which respectively represent the Evaluation, Activity and Power
associated to university. The first one, the Evaluation factor actually explains 32% of the variance
and indicates a positive or negative general perception of the university, including adjectives like
meritocratic-clientelistic, efficient-inefficient, useful-usefulness, competent-incompetent, and
productive-unproductive ( = .78): it exemplifies the most representative component of the attitude.
Activity factor explains 12.6% of the variance and suggests the dynamism associated to university,
including adjectives like dynamic-static, practical-theoretical and innovative-conservative ( = .56).
Finally, Power factor explains 11.6% of the variance, including loadings of adjectives as poor-rich
and under evaluated-over evaluated, and it represents the powerful associated to university ( =
.32). In this case also we considered only the factors reliable enough ( > .60). Thats because lower
coefficients suggest that combined items didnt lead sufficiently to significant scores, so they were
not very representative. In any case, for all the factors extracted variables correspondent have been
computed, using mean scores between the items included in each factor. Then, variables have been
named using tag over mentioned.

Analyses of variance (T-test)

12

In the whole sample, T-test was performed to determine any significant difference among
the two subpopulations of students in their evaluative component of the attitude towards university
and in their beliefs (Tab. 2, Appendix).
Findings from the analyses of variance with T-test revealed that there are significant
differences among Italians and French for what concerns the Evaluation factor, indicating a
significant difference in the variance between responses given by French and Italians to semantic
differential, where French students scores are higher. Also, a significant difference among the two
groups of students has been found for what concerns the belief on the relationship between
university and the territory, and the belief on the financial support. Actually, referring to the former,
Italians scores are higher, for the latter is exactly the opposite. Finally, we still found a significant
difference for what concerns the belief on the link between University and the labor market, where
French students scores are higher. These results validate H2.

Correlations between beliefs and attitude

We analyzed correlations between age, attitude, beliefs and degree of knowledge in order to
verify if these dimensions could vary together.
In the whole sample, positive significant correlations have been found between age and
knowledge scores, as well as knowledge scores and Territory. Also, positive significant correlations
have been found between Evaluation and all the beliefs. Conversely, negative significant
correlations have been found between age, knowledge and financial support (Tab.3, Appendix).
These results confirm H3.

Discussion
13

Evocations analyses for all the students revealed a central core of the representation with
contents which are in part shared by the French and the Italians at the same way. This is in line with
our first hypothesis (H1) and actually suggests that in students representation the perception on the
link between universities and the labor market is quite far from the core of the representation. If we
look at the results more deeply, for the French analyses revealed a central core where Job appears,
indicating that the representation may vary depending on the context, as hypothesized (H2).
Furthermore, the Italians showed a richer central core, including not only most of the elements
included in the combined representation, but also two typical others, which are Culture (as a set of
know and know-how) and Commitment. These results, in a comparison, make us think that
apparently for French students the labor market and job placement are closer to university
representation than for the Italian ones, whereas for them competences and knowledge, that is the
training function of universities, are closer to their representation. This is actually in line with the
report published by the European Commission in 2011. Moreover, for the Italians university is
closer to scientific research, which for the French appears just in the first periphery.
To summarize, we could infer that for French students university is more related to
professional development and work satisfaction, as well as career design, whereas for the Italians it
is better defined as a place in which to improve personal skills and knowledge and maybe to
innovate, throughout the research. Thus it seems that probably for Italians university is more
defined as a theoretical entity, whereas for French as a set of contents, self and personal training
(suggested by Autonomy in the central core), and introduction to job life. These differences could
be due to the proximal context, which influence the way in which social agents represent the object
we are interested in, indeed university.
At that point, students perceptions and evocations indicate that there is a gap between an
ideal model of university (with three main functions: training, research and entrepreneurial) and its
effective correspondent. On one hand, it seems that the training function of university is
acknowledged and strengthened, as confirmed by the presence of words included in teaching and
14

training areas in central core position. Conversely, in the French students representation the
research function is distant, and among the Italian ones is distant the entrepreneurial role, as the EU
Commission survey suggested. As a matter of fact these two words stay in the transformation zone
of the representation, which mean that a change may be still in progress, so it will be interesting to
repeat the study in about two or three years to see what changes will be occurred. Here we can just
say that the general representation of the university is shared almost in the same way in both groups,
as we expected (H1), even if with such a particular nuance in the contents more involved in the
central core.
The analysis of the semantic differential showed us that university is considered as useful,
competent and productive by all the students. Also, it is perceived as more theoretical and poorer
than practical and richer. T-test analyses showed that the attitude varies significantly among Italians
and French, as we hypothesized (H2). This could be due in turn to information sharing on university
in the different countries. As we said, some local French magazine reported one of the university
functions in being a start-up point for the own business and job placement (Brafman & ReyLefebvre, 2014). So the result was not unexpected and unexplained.
Related to this could be the other result, which is that French tended to report a more
positive attitude, which would mean that they probably evaluate university as more meritocratic,
efficient, useful, competent, and productive than the Italians.
Furthermore, if we look at the correlations analysis in the main sample, were going to
notice that there is an actually significant but negative correlation among knowledge and age and
beliefs on financial support. This feature indicates that apparently more experienced students tend
also to think that university doesnt dispose of enough resources, neither that it is supported by the
State.
Results from T-test analyses revealed that in general there are significant differences among
Italians and French in the matter of the beliefs that they have on university, as well as of the attitude
toward it. As we see, the French tend to think more than the Italians that university modulates its
15

training programs depending on labor market needs and allows students to go-getting. At the same
time, they also show to think more than the Italians that university is financially supported by the
State and has resources enough to do its activities. This in turn let us confirms the previous
consideration on attitude.
Conversely, to explain differences in the attitude, there could be a heuristic component
which occurred, whereas lesser knowledge someone has on such a thing, more he or she will tend to
complete own representation with intuitive contents (Hardman, 2009). According to this, someone
less experienced could think to university as he/she does with respect to something similar he/she
already knows. Still, according to the affect heuristic we actually tend to estimate good something
closer to us (Lowenstein et al., 2001). Major knowledge on something let us to have a more realistic
judgment.
Hence, to summarize, the attitude towards the university among these two groups of students
is significantly different, with a positive pole in the French sample, as a matter of fact. Additionally,
the attitude can apparently vary depending on the beliefs that students share and the knowledge they
have. In that way we confirmed our second and third hypothesis.
With regards to the third mission of university, that is social and community development,
results showed a clear presence of that feature especially among the Italians. Compared to the
French, they reported more responses where they think that university collaborate with public and
private organizations and that it is a good resource for the social environment, in accord with the
entrepreneurial role proposed by Etzkowitz (1983). Otherwise this is actually in contrast with the
EU survey (2011), where the French students showed a clearer attitude to entrepreneurship
compared to the Italians. This gap could be probably considered as new and interesting information
not revealed three years ago, and probably could refer to a sort of ideal representation. The last
result could explain the positive correlation between the attitude and beliefs on university/territory
relationship, both for Italians and French.

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In general, we would like to propose that thinking that university is in relation with
environmental organizations, that it pays attention to external requests when it plans its activities, as
well as it produces innovation useful for the society, plays an important role in strengthening a
positive attitude.
In summary, in this paper we explored a vast and various land, much more than we can
include it into rigid scheme, as instead we tried to do. And results we got let more exciting the
challenge. We hypothesized that people belonging to the same group, like European students, share
a system of beliefs, attitudes and representations which let them have similar opinion on a social
object, which could be the university. Similarly, the membership to different groups of the same
community lets vary their opinions in a characteristic way, as the differences among Italians and
French demonstrated. Also, the more we know about, the more we will express realistic opinions. It
seems that the main aspects underlined by European guidelines are actually perceived by the
students as the main factors characterizing university. These probably drive us to evaluate positively
this institution and to develop a positive attitude, but we are still moving to a better state of affairs.
It would be interesting to repeat the same study in a second time, to see what changes will
happen both in the institutions, and in public opinion. A continuous monitoring will actually catch
precious information about the quality of the services offered, and would bring us to consider needs
people have. To make the study more comprehensive it would be appropriate to extend the survey
to teachers, researchers and administrative staff of universities, because they represent different but
fundamental circuits of one system. The final result can just make possible and enhance every
required intervention in order to always have a continuous and constant improvement. Attention and
awareness are the key-words to keep walking towards a future certainly not perfect, but getting
better.

17

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20

APPENDIX

Tab. 1 Central core of the social representation of university: comparing results from Italian and French
students quoted words.

1st periphery

Central core
Italy Frequencies
64 Studies
40 Training
29 Research
22 Knowledge
19 Culture
17 Commitment

21 Exams
19 Job

28 Studies
26 Courses
19 Autonomy
19 Job

14 Research
12 Learning
12 Auditorium

France Frequencies

Tab. 2 T-test results performed in the whole sample for the extracted reliable factors.

Evaluation
Job and context
Knowledge improvement
Territory
Financial support

Italians (173)
M
DS
4.5
1.2
2.5
0.8
3.7
0.7
3.4
0.8
2.3
0.9

French (123)
M
DS
5
0.8
2.7
0.7
3.8
0.7
3.1
0.7
2.9
0.8

t-test
-3.9
-2.1
-1.2
3.2
-7.2

P
.00**
.04**
.22
.00**
.00**

Tab. 3 Correlations analysis performed in the whole sample (N=296).

Variables
1. Age
2. Knowledge
3. Job and context
4.Knowledge improvement
5. Community
6. Financial support
7. Evaluation

M SD
22.8 2.2
8.1 2.4
2.6 0.8
3.7 0.7
3.2 0.8
2.6 0.9
4.7 1.1

1
.197**
-.113
-.078
.004
-.233**
-.106

21

-.024
.101
.230**
-.233**
-.087

.527**
.420**
.439**
.497**

.504**
.226**
.602**

.147**
.336**

.317**