University and small and medium enterprises: interdependent systems or monads? A comparison between the italian university systems and the french one

The Bologna process and the Lisbona strategy showed the different national laws the organizational axes around which innovate and harmonize the various European universities. The analysis of the different national reforms of the universities show, however, that the objectives of full employment and economic competitiveness do not appear fulfilled (Charle 2007). The reforms concerned the repartition of the university studies into two cycles, the development of students mobility programs, the promotion of international cooperation programs but, rarely, the construction of a competitive knowledge (Vallauri 2004). Moving from the comparison between the recent university reform realized in Italy and the French university legislation, we mean to analyze in the two different countries the different role that the public policies have in encouraging the construction of a competitive knowledge. The exposition is in two parts. In the first one we introduce a theoretical model of university innovation. The degree of democracy of the courses and its interdependence with national and international labour market represent the constitutive dimensions of the model. In the second one, we analyze the university reforms realized in Italy and France in relation to the theoretical model. The analysis shows some negative effects common to both experiences and some distinctive features. The length of the courses, the major university drop-out rates, the risk of education to be devalued, characterize the current university systems in Italy like in France (Pitzalis 2002). The function of promoting research in public policies is however different in the two countries. In France, the public policies offer the small and medium enterprises a supply of skilled labor and facilitate the job placement of young graduates. In Italy, theses policies, have instead a different function more aimed at the technological innovation of the equipment of the firms than at the recruitment of skilled human capital. These reflections on the role of public policies in university innovation as indicated in the European law do not appear only as an exercise of multi-levels governance; this analysis can draw the different policy makers???attention and can give the different academicians ideas or show practices through which they can participate in the construction of a competitive university knowledge.