Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the supply of knowledge of the Italian university system and the competencies requested on the labour market, in a context of deep transformations and of large evolutionary dynamics which are emerging both in productive organisations and in the highest segment of training supply. The changes which are taking place, especially in the nature and content of work, tend to reduce the signalling power of degrees to firms, due to their lack of content of competencies requested in the work-places with new productive methods. The limits in the signalling power of degrees is likely to persist in the near future because of the predominance of deductive and unilateral procedures in the basic mechanisms established for knowledge transmission and competence formation. Such procedures tend to favour a learning process that can be reduced to the "metabolisation" of notions and information, which do not generate the order principle required to make sense of cognitive experience. Perspectives could definitely be improved by the implementation of what modern pedagogy proposes, namely a pedagogic u-turn in favour of a "constructivist" approach. The paper concludes on some university policy indications which should help to reach the objective of reduction of the aforementioned mismatch. Such actions should however be accompanied by complementary actions of industrial policy, aimed at encouraging the development of workplace practices towards the implementation of the innovative processes and the human resource management methods that allow to turn the firm into a "learning organization" and a "knowledge-creating company".