Half of the university students do not want to return to the classroom – breaking latest news

Rome, July 17, 2021 – What happens at the University? Half of the students does not find it interesting return to class in person. The data emerges from a research conducted by sociologists Giuseppe Monteduro and Livia Petti of the University of Molise, and their colleagues from different universities on a large sample, 23,000 students. If half of these are no longer interested in going back to class, but find it better to receive classes at home online, an urgent question arises.

What is a university lecture? After all, strange paradox, the other half saying they want to return at the university it motivates the choice for the desire for sociability, services and friendships, more than for the relationship with the teachers. Those who want to stay at home take lessons, but all in all equating them with moments of tutorials around a topic, as you can find galore on every subject on the net.

So, what happens at the University, all right? Or perhaps the new life and new opportunities created by the pandemic have revealed profound issues hitherto undisclosed? We know that following various reforms, today going to university means giving hours of attention to lessons and exams in exchange for “credits”. This approach has inevitably generated a paradox in an institution that, as is well known, was born in Italy in Bologna around 1088 on an opposite model: students who went to a place eager to meet (and pay) masters with whom to entertain themselves in lessons and conversations.

Now, however, the University seems to offer itself as a provider of services and performance, and therefore inevitably falls, in the era of delivery, of home deliveries, to the rank of providing services of mere education. Not only is the role that the University has always had of collective and social cultural elaboration affected, but above all the role of teachers is discussed, which it is not all that interesting to meet and attend. Of course, the data that emerged from the research must be analyzed even more in depth, evaluating the differences between faculties or schools and between universities, but certainly a mottled light of disquiet falls on our universities.

Will they still pretend nothing has happened? Sure, distance learning, if used wisely, it can be a resource. But if it is a simple substitution, it means that what existed before must be questioned thoroughly. And maybe our kids deserve more.