Education: Removing the Italian Welcome Mat

The notice posted at Italy's stately Park Avenue consulate general in New York was harsh: "Owing to the saturation of Italian universities, the Italian authorities have decided to suspend all enrollments of foreign citizens for the academic years 1977-78 and 1978-79." Similarly blunt notices appeared at Italian consulates worldwide. The announcement two weeks ago set off a barrage of angry, incredulous calls from parents of many of the 10,000 or so students, in nearly 100 countries, who are studying Italian in order to enter one of Italy's universities this fall.

Last week the protests were continuing unabated. In Athens the Parents" Committee of Greek Candidate-Students and Students in Italy staged a demonstration in front of the Greek foreign ministry. "Our kids were psychologically prepared for Italy," fumed Athens pharmacist Evangellos Roussos, president of the committee. "They not only studied Italian, but attended cultural courses. It's inhuman to do this to them." Other parents and students are flying to Italy to protest in person. "The timing of the ban came as a total and complete shock," says Albert Schrager, 54, whose nonprofit Italo-American Medical Education Foundation has for five years shepherded American medical students into Italian med schools and invited Italian doctors to do research in the U.S.

Soaring Enrollment. The crisis in the Italian universities derived partly from the student rebellion in the spring of 1968, when young radicals took to the streets to demand abolition of the traditional admissions process that favored the well-schooled children of the middle and upper classes. Bowing to the students' pressure, the government threw open its state-run universities to anyone wishing to enroll. The sole requirements: a yearly tax of $70 and, for foreign students, a working knowledge of Italian. Since then the number of foreigners has swelled to some 50,000, adding to the swarms of working-class students taking advantage of the new opportunity. At Rome University, for example, enrollment has soared from 88,757 in the 1970-71 academic year to 134,476 in the current year.

The overcrowding has troubled both the universities and the cities that house them. Student violence closed Rome University for eight weeks during the past academic year. Some unemployed university graduates—who account for about 350,000 of Italy's 1 million youthful unemployed—have joined in the terrorism of groups like the "Red Brigades" (TIME, July 4).

Hardest hit by the prospective ban are the Greeks, with an estimated 14,000 students in Italian universities and 1,500 scheduled to arrive this fall. About 1,500 U.S. students are currently on campuses, with another 450 planning to enroll, 75% of them would-be doctors. Rejected by the 116 highly selective U.S. medical schools, which accepted only 15,000 applicants last year out of about 40,000. these Americans have been converging on Italy in hopes of doing well enough during the required six-year Italian stint to transfer to a school back home. "We would all have preferred to go to an American medical school," admits Steve Husecki, 26. a graduate of Indiana University now studying at Rome University. "It's a long way to come, and you have to learn another language and cope with another culture."