Transforming the University through the Students’ Voice

It can be said that higher education systems have undergone a momentous change that has irreversibly transformed the nature, the goals, and the scientific, educational and organisational practices. In Europe, and in particular in Italy, new working scenarios and new knowledge needs have emphasised the critical factors and contradictions of curricula and strategies of university governance that are all too often fixed on theoretical-disciplinary logic. There is often no parallel attention to the pertinence with outgoing professionals, when there is a need to give the right space to all the disciplinary areas in the courses. It is not difficult to trace experiences planned more on self-referential than workplace oriented criteria. Thus, the challenge of producing important, relevant knowledge for social, organisational and working contexts becomes increasingly vital for universities, as well as spreading investigation devices that can produce located knowledge.