Abstract
While youth unemployment always hits the headlines of newspapers, no proposals have been put forward to tackle it. One issue concerns the matching of labour demand and supply, which is compounded by the fact that no universities make available students’ CVs, thus failing to comply with relevant legislation. This is a serious issue, in that none of the 90 universities serves as an intermediary to ease fresh graduates’ access to employment. Today, universities publish students’ CV only to formally abide by the law and not to create a network of relations with companies and to serve as a link between school and employment (for instance through career days, companies’ presentations, training programmes). For the time being, no effective connection is in place between educational bodies and the labour market, with this relationship that is frequently neglected or played down, especially when dealing with youth unemployment. In addition, universities should also play a more important role at the time of defining employment and labour market policies, with vocational schools that are the first channel to develop and promote human resources and contribute to national growth. The purpose is that of increasing the quality of higher education and making the skills developed in universities years more “marketable”, by introducing a credit-based system related to training and guidance activities. Training is therefore a useful tool to earn the credits required to obtain a degree and to enable students to develop expertise that will be used in their professional lives. Finally, concluding partnerships between universities and companies to better manage placement systems could be a first step to facilitating young people’s access to the labour market.
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