Plans to create a national consultative body of students to discuss radical reforms of the Italian university system have collapsed.
The structural reform of degree courses will now take place before such a body can be formed. Some left-wing student groups have "symbolically" occupied a number of university buildings and called for university minister Ortensio Zecchino to resign.
Mr Zecchino's predecessor had hoped to set up an elected national panel of student representatives to help redesign degree courses on "European" lines -Jie, with a credits system, a three-year basic degree and an option of further training.
The reform plan is in its final stages, and the failure to elect a student panel has largely excluded students from the process. Student representation on the academic councils of universities has existed for some years, but the creation of a national body to work directly with the ministry would have been a novelty.
Elections for the panel were scheduled for late March in universities across Italy. But students in Florence complained to a regional tribunal that there had been delays in the posting of bills with the lists of those entitled to vote. The tribunal accepted the technicality and suspended the elections country-wide. The university ministry appealed to the state council, which upheld the tribunal's decision.
After the verdict, Mr Zecchino met representatives of the main student organisations and tentatively agreed to hold elections next spring. The main left-wing student body, the UDU, disagreed on the grounds that all of the major decisions will have been taken by then. "There was some levity on the part of the ministry in allowing this to happen," said Francesco Sinopoli, UDU president.
Vincenzo Santoro, the students' rights expert at the university ministry, said: "In spite of this set-back, there will be informal consultations with representatives of the main student groups during the reform programme. The date of spring 2000 was agreed on by most of the student groups because it will guarantee the presence of as many students as possible in the universities to vote."
Very few students take part in university politics. Even the UDU can claim just 4,000 members and coordination of 10,000 others, out of a student population of more than 1.6 million.
Only 10-20 per cent of students actually vote in elections for representatives to sit on the academic councils of their universities. "This is because power on academic councils is virtually non-existent," Mr Sinopoli said. "In a national council with real decision-making power, I'm sure we would see much greater participation. As things stand, student participation has started out lame, to the benefit of the academic barons who will continue to make all the important decisions."