It produces the lowest number of patents in Europe, pays professors and researchers dismally, and fails to reward performance. Practically nothing is based on real and measurable merit. Italy's schools, meanwhile, are turning out few graduates with 21st century skills. From elementary school through college, computers are often scarce in many classrooms. The state of Italian universities is hopeless.
Many students just give up.
Italian companies are hard-pressed to compensate for the scarcity of workers with top engineering degrees and other computer, telecom, or technical skills. Appendino's Net Partners, for example, has difficulty recruiting good accountants, Web masters, or networking managers in Italy. These glaring weaknesses, combined with sagging research efforts, could well exclude Italy from next-generation growth. There is no question that technology drives growth. This country needs a chief scientist.