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51   Technological Gap and Italy's Future
     The Washington Post, Tuesday, July 4, 1967

     (The writer, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine, is a
professor of biochemistry at Stanford University and a regular
columnist for The Washington Post).

     Rome.  The technological gap has become a major factor in United
States-Italian relations since it was dramatized last July at NATO
consultations by Foreign Minister Amintore Fanfani.  The underlying
grievance must puzzle Americans.  It mainly reflects the very success
of our economic and ideological system of industrial progress.  This
is the consistent application of scientific technique derived from
a large investment in research and development.

     To many Italians, however, the gap looms as a subtle kind of
economic imperialism -- the penetration and eventual domination of the
Italian economy by United States corporate interests through control
of the most advanced technological know-how.

     We do not need to pursue any theory of malevolent intentions to
perceive that this may indeed happen: the gap is in fact widening.
Italian culture is too important to Western democracy for us to be
complacent about limitations on Italian economic vigor.

     Fanfani's complaints should, therefore, be welcomed as creating
a graceful opportunity for a constructive dialogue, not a defensive
self-justification on the part of the United States.  In fact, it is
widely recognized that the problem is largely internal; it is an
educational gap in Italy that calls for the most urgent reforms.

     One of the most articulate critics is Dr. Adriano Buzzati-
Traverso, professor of genetics at the University of Pavia and
director of the International Laboratory of Genetics and Biophysics
at Naples.  Dr. Buzzati writes regularly and aggressively on this
subject for L'Espresso, published here, and discussed the situation
in detail with me on a pleasant drive along the Mediterranean coast
from Naples.

     Italy is making strenuous efforts in primary and secondary
education and devotes a fifth of its national budget of $12 billion
to it.  Higher education, however, accounts for only $150 million,
virtually all of it administered by the national ministry.  Per
capita, this is a tenth of the United States investment.  These lags
would be enough to dim the expectations for Italy's technological
future.

     The qualitative aspects of higher education here darken the
prospects much more.  No country in Europe has a more rigid, almost
medieval system.  Professors are so poorly paid they are expected
to augment their salaries with other jobs.  Students are regimented,
examination-ridden, bored, alienated from their professors and from a
curriculum almost irrelevant to contemporary life.

     Paradoxically, the existing establishment of university
professors must assume much of the responsibility for this situation.
The impetus for reform comes from many younger graduates, who have
little hope of achieving a prized chair - valued not for its salary
but for its prestige as a springboard to other positions.  The
appointment to a professorship anywhere in Italy is conducted by a
formal national competition judged by the existing professors.  While
merit still plays a perceptible part in these choices, the most
blatant political accommodations are inevitably the most important.

     One of the most serious limitations is the absence of graduate
education in the sciences -- there is no degree comparable to the
Ph.D.

     The greatest contribution that Americans could make to
technological development in Italy would be to spark a new kind of
center of advanced education, comparable to the best of private
American universities.  This could then be an inspiring example of
the accomplishments open to a people who have no lack of fundamental
intellectual resources.

     Government support of intensified exchange programs, such as the
Johnson Administration has encouraged, can play a useful part by 
driving home the potential challenge.  But private and industrial
support, perhaps initially from the same United States interests
accused of imperialism, could have the greatest leverage by
sponsoring new patterns of higher education free of the
ultra-conservatism of the existing educational hierarchy.

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