Cash is a four-letter word for Italians

UK and German universities are now doing what the US and Australia are old hands at - tapping alumni for cash. But Italians still think it's all rather vulgar...

Italian tax laws are decidedly hostile to donations to universities. Coupled with a centralised higher education system in which the bills are footed by the state, this has discouraged attempts to raise funds from former students.

Many alumni would not be receptive, given a teaching system that tends to be impersonal, with little direct contact between students and lecturers. Most Italians feel little attachment to the university at which they studied. There is also an instinctive revulsion towards doing anything as vulgar as asking around for money. The general attitude is that the state should support its universities.

Asked if its association of former students was engaged in fundraising, there was a sharp intake of breath before a spokesman for the elite Scuola Normale di Pisa said: "Oh, no, no, they organise conferences... twice a year a publication... that sort of thing."

Officials at the Bocconi University, the renowned business administration school in Milan, were also adamant that its alumni organisation was not used for fundraising. The Italian Rectors Conference said that, as far as it knew, nothing of the kind happened in the country's universities.

But there is one exception to this distaste for cash: the Libera Universita Internazionale Studi Sociali (Luiss), an independent university in Rome closely connected to industry and employers' forum Confindustria.

Alumni association president Giuseppe Cornetto Burlot has been charged with trying to raise funds. "Tax law makes direct donations difficult. Instead, we are thinking of funding for projects that are of some benefit to the company providing the money. The company would be able to declare it as a cost. An example might be a cultural project that would benefit the company's image."

Asked why Luiss was the only university in Italy working on fundraising through alumni groups, Mr Cornetto Burlot said: "I bet at Bocconi they are at least thinking about it."