"University Research Policies: How do the new Accounting Techniques challenge Academic Community?"

The University system has been recently challenged by a series of reforms on the aim of giving “value for money” in conceiving teaching and research activities. These changes have involved, in different ways and times, the Anglo-Saxons Universities (e.g. RAE exercise in UK) as well as those systems that Von Humboldt (1970) define “oligarchic-bureaucratic” (like the German and the Italian ones). Various Authors critically revised the consequences of the spreading of managerial efficiency and effectiveness paradigms in Universities (Neumann, Guthrie, 2002, Baker, 2002, Parker, 2002, Tinker, 2006), especially on the freedom of research, and researcher professionalism. Regarding Italy, Mazza, Quattrone, Riccaboni (2006) remark that almost these changes are tied to a decrease (and/or the adoption of different models) on the State funding of the Universities (law 507/1993 and ministry decree 146/2004). Tinker (2006: 703-4) remarks that progressive researchers cannot more indulge in elitist whining about commercialization as they risk to be anachronistic and pretentious. The attempt to re-enact the similitude of Universities like “ivory towers” of the knowledge into the reality of an economic-competitive world, dominated by international consistencies (e.g. Bologna process), have encompassed a series of top-down interventions such as the activity of the Italian CIVR (National Committee for the Research Assessment). CIVR was conceived with the decree law 204/1998 and it is specifically involved in creating operative tools for the assessment of the academic research (like VTR: three-year research evaluation), stimulating the debate on this stream and formulating proposals directly to the Italian Ministry for Research and Universities. The stress on the research, considered as the real University value, seems the most qualified solution to reach international competitiveness and gloss over the Italian time-gap. But, as underlined by Modell (2003), the adoption of goal-directed views in the top-down proposals and reforms could be connected to a double discrepancy: between the political rhetoric and the reduction of its goals’ ambiguity, and between the local compliance on formal criteria in order to obtain funding and the real commitment. However, the need to find ways on combating these changes, as stressed by Tinker (2006) is through giving a more in-deep understanding of the basic intertwined political and managerial logics. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the discrepancies between Italian policy on Universities and the tools and indicators which are used to assess the research, together with their possible counteracting or uncoordinated effects. Concerning the methodological issues, the paper would benefit from a qualitative content analysis of the CIVR indexes and reports and from a critical narrative based on the opinions of a group of academic community. The proposed structure is as follows: in a first section we trace a profile of the Italian University context, shading lights on the national policies, international antecedents and competition for funds, subsequently, we analyse the connected need for research management techniques and how it creates different reactions on the academic community (e.g. between “hard” and “soft” sciences). As the cited need is fulfilled by the activity of different institutional actors, we then concentrate on the activity of CIVR and its reports and indexes. Finally, we verify if they are coherent with respect to the general government policies and actually able to stimulate the academic debate on these issues.