The situation is even worse for university graduates in Italy, as their number is just over half that of the European average, at 17 per cent of working age adults, against 35 per cent.
If high-school and university graduates are relatively rarer in Italy, they should be more sought after, yet this is not the case: there are as many instances of over-qualification for jobs in Italy as in other countries,3 especially early in working life.4 These results are not accidental, but rather the outcome of a strategic choice made a century ago and that has never been changed, whereby public resources were channelled more towards nursery and primary schools, less towards secondary schools and even less again for universities and postgraduate studies.