Cosenza – Coruc – the regional coordination committee of Calabrian universities – has given the green light to the establishment of four new degree courses proposed by Unical and which will enter the educational offer starting from the 2023-2024 academic year, immediately after the go-ahead from Anvur (National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research System) and the Ministry of University and Research, which should arrive in the next few months.
“This is a historic turning point – commented the rector Nicola Leone in a note – which follows the reform of the teaching proposal two years ago. A step motivated mainly by two needs: to respond to the growing demand for health training that comes from students Calabrians, and go to the rescue of the territory that has been experiencing a profound emergency in the health field for years, contributing to the development of regional health and promoting the growth of competence in strategic sectors of medicine”. In the new offer, therefore, the courses in the health sector are growing, which will be in agreement with the “Annunziata” hospital of Cosenza and with the provincial health authority and will therefore immediately bring new human resources to the wards. The aim is also to create new figures with specific skills for the innovation sectors, in the digital transition season, and for the sea and navigation, in a region that boasts 800 kilometers of coastline and, in Gioia Tauro, one of the most important ports of Europe.
As for Medicine, it is explained, “the course belongs to the class of master’s degrees LM-41 (Medicine and Surgery) and allows the student, at the end of the 6 years and by passing a few additional exams, to obtain a double title: it will be in fact doctor in Medicine and Surgery, with access therefore to the profession of doctor, and in Computer Engineering, bioinformatics curriculum (three-year degree).The path, highly innovative and among the few active in Italy – reads the note – is similar to the activated course at Unical in 2021 and inter-university with Catanzaro, but in this case it is carried out entirely at the University of Calabria.The courses for the whole six-year period will therefore be on campus and the internships will be carried out at the Annunziata hospital, which will be affected by a trial progressive clinicalization.The project – it is underlined – which was also supported by the governor of the Region and ad acta commissioner for health, Roberto Occhiuto, will lead edale Cosenza new resources and will enhance the doctors already present in the hospital, who will be able to be involved in the university’s training processes. Unical has already allocated an initial investment for the recruitment of eight university researchers who will carry out teaching and research activities in the university and who, after signing the agreement with the Cosenza hospital, will be able to provide clinical services in the hospital. together with three medical professors already on Unical’s staff. The disciplinary sectors of the eight researchers – we finally read – were chosen on medical specialties with a high health migration and related to positions currently vacant in the hospital staff”.
reactions
Mayor Catanzaro: “We will counteract the weakening of our university”
“My appeal to the President of the Region and to the Rectors for a shared solution to the question concerning the medical faculty would seem to have gone in vain. Even if there is no official news, Coruc, the regional university committee, would have tended to express a favorable opinion to the birth of the second medical faculty at Unical, without addressing the problem of a general rebalancing of the educational offer. If this decision were confirmed, we would be faced with the forcing I had feared”. This was stated in a note by the mayor of Catanzaro, Nicola Fiorita. “I am waiting to know – he adds – the contents of the decisions adopted by Coruc and also the reasons that led the rector of Magna Graecia De Sarro to abstain. I don’t like holy wars and crusades, but I can already say that if the establishment of the second medical faculty does not correspond to a significant expansion of the teaching offer of the University of Catanzaro, the municipal administration will oppose with all the means at its disposal a decision that would significantly weaken the role of Magna Graecia. We will closely follow all the administrative acts that will be produced in this sense by the Ministry of the University and the National University Council, verifying whether the requirements established by law exist for the establishment of a new medical degree course in a region with less of two million inhabitants and in a city that does not have a reference hospital”. “I am very sorry – concludes Fiorita – that the path of dialogue that I had indicated has not been given due consideration”.
Ferro: “Birth of a new faculty, a useless duplication”
“I have always expressed my opposition to a project, that of the creation of a second faculty of Medicine at Unical, which starts from afar, since the hypothesis was outlined in 2011 by the then governor Oliverio, but which has found strength because was pursued jointly by a large part of Cosenza’s politics, without distinction of alignment, together with the academic world“. This is what Undersecretary Wanda Ferro says, who continues: “I have always considered the birth of a new faculty as a useless duplication, which risks to fragment resources and give life to two weak, unattractive realities, which risk being penalized by numbers, including those relating to the services provided to which specialization schools are linked, in an increasingly competitive university education system. Instead of strengthening the Faculty of Medicine of Catanzaro and its Polyclinic, it was decided to create a second photocopied faculty just one hundred kilometers away. A difficult choice to understand if one considers that the research and training of doctors always require new experiences and a continuous comparison with realities from all over the world in order to build valid professional paths. The activation of the new faculty therefore risks penalizing the quality of the training of future Calabrian doctors, and the same considerations would apply if, for example, the University of Catanzaro decided to activate – at this point legitimately – an engineering faculty. Also for this reason, the abstention position of the rector De Sarro within the Coruc raises perplexities, a body that should guarantee an organic and overall vision of the regional university system, but which above all should express a position of foresight and responsibility of the rectors, aimed at the quality of training offered to young Calabrians, which can only be guaranteed by strengthening the peculiarities of each university. A criterion of common sense even before that of good administration, which seems to have been completely skipped, as well as the very idea of the university ‘system’, in the name of short-sighted bell tower interests”.