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| UNIVERSITY AND TRAINING
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| University arrives to Treviso |
The establishment of the Treviso University Centre has been the result of a ten-year-long joint effort by the
Chamber of Commerce, Cassamarca Foundation, Provincial Administration, "Treviso Tecnologia" Special Agency of the
Chamber of Commerce, Town Council, CUT, Padua University, Ca'Foscari University of Venice, IUAV of Venice, as well
as other bodies and Institutions.
The enlightened choices behind this project aimed at creating a technical and cultural substrate for a rapidly evolving industrial reality in what has been a winning bet. State-of-the-art research technologies have been made available to the province's experienced entrepreneurs and craftsmen.
Our university system is heavily underfunded compared with other European countries who are our partners but also our competitors on world markets. This is a problem that does not only affect
the university world but Veneto's economic system as a whole, companies are realising that they can
no longer compete on prices,
that the technological gap is bound to get thinner and product quality needs to continually innovate.
Staying competitive is an increasingly more daunting challenge: the north-east engine which drives the national
economy is starting to hear the clanging of competing countries, both European and extra European. A university
located near firms therefore means, among other things, being able to take advantage of qualified research and
innovation. The "brains" are our most precious resource: they are the raw material to allow us to build a network of
knowledge and innovation, the only wealth that no Chinese will ever be able to clone. In few words universities,
which are strongly oriented to basic research, can help us steer our economic system towards a quality-geared
development model, with positive effects on social and human relations too.
The Treviso Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than ninety thousand firms, believes that funding
university is an investment and I think it is useful to have a more detailed idea of what it is achieving with IUAV,
the Architecture University Institute of Venice, in this respect. The Treviso Chamber of Commerce has been funding
ClaDis (Degree Courses in Industrial Design) since 2000 and ClaDIP (Specialist Degree Course in Product Industrial
Design) since 2002. 538 candidates sat the last admission test to apply for the 120 available places in ClaDis and
there are 410 students in total in the 3 course years. 73 applications were received for the 50 places available at
ClaDIP, even from other Italian and foreign universities.
The Chamber of Commerce is allocating 1, 096,406 euro for this year, which equals approximately 10% of its promotional budget,
a figure which in any case represents 5% of its entire budget. In total since 2000, the first academic year, the Treviso
Chamber of Commerce has invested 3,590,787 euro, which equals approximately 7 billion old lire. For 2004 and 2005 a further
1,434,000 euro were allocated for each year. So far students have been able to use very limited or even insufficient spaces,
it is true, but despite space limitations the teaching body, led by director Medardo Chiapponi, principal Marco De Michelis and
chancellor Marino Folin, has been active in organizing a range of workshops at major Treviso firms such as De Longhi, Frezza,
Tecnica, Tipoteca Trevigiana. 180 students as well as several Italian and foreign designers took part in the last workshop,
which ended a few weeks ago.
As well as being an educational opportunity, these workshops have the purpose of fostering and consolidating
relations with innovative firms in the field of industrial goods production in the North-East. Experience tells us
that 90% of students graduating from these courses are in employment within one year and that approximately 20%
already receive concrete job offers while still attending the courses. This certainly represents an exemplary case
in the field of investments in productive system innovation and competitiveness.
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Federico Tessari,
president of the CCIAA Treviso
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