Italy: Italian universities fail to satisfy Erasmus students

Italy? A comfortable country – but not too comfortable – and very expensive, a place with no guarantee of low cost accommodation for students and where knowing the English language is of little consequence. This is Italy as seen through the eyes of Erasmus students, say the results of a questionnaire carried out by the free press ?Students? Magazine? and by the Erasmus Student Network in Italy. More than 1,500 students from 28 different countries in 27 different Italian cities answered the twenty questions that made up the survey through Esn?s web site www.esn.it .

The problems that foreign students feel the most when they land in Italy are the expensive prices and the confused university system. 83% of the interviewed students say they spend more in Italy than they do in their own countries, rent being their greatest expense. Followed by food, entertainment and books.

The Italian university system didn?t come out well either. 71% of interviewees think less highly of Italian university than of their universities at home and 39.6% of respondents attributed the low standards to the bad infrastructure. The lack of internet services (24.4%), the difficulty of finding information (19.5%) and of reaching professors (16.5%) were among the other causes. Compared to their professors back home, 59% of Erasmus students in Italy ?doesn?t see any difference?, 25% judge them ?worse? and only 16% consider them better.

Finding accommodation is another big challenge for Erasmus students. House are not only expensive but also difficult to find: 66% of those interviewed admitted that they had trouble finding a place to stay. Mainly because of the prices, say 37.4% of the students who answered the questionnaire, but also because of bad living conditions in the apartments (29.1%), the unwillingness of owners to rent out to foreigners (for 20.8%) and because of the absence of a contract (for 12.7%).

Language is also problematic. Many Erasmus students said they had trouble learning Italian and 47% of them claim to have insufficient or scarce knowledge of the language, 30.6% sufficient and only 22.4% consider it good. But almost all say that their Italian has improved over the course of their stay ? even though few attribute this improvement to the language courses organised by the Italian universities they attend. Only half (52.6%) of those interviewed say they have even ever attended them and 30.6% say they have never set foot in the Italian language classroom. When it comes to the use of English, Erasmus students are very harsh. Only 1.4% consider knowledge of the English language essential here in Italy, while 46.6% think it is absolutely useless and 53% think it is useful, but not essential.

The mixed picture that emerges from the Erasmus student survey doesn?t, however, manage to wipe away Italy?s undoubted charm, with 97% of Erasmus students saying they come to Italy because they ?were always attracted by Italy? and 60% say that they would love to return.