Why Foreign Students Do Not Enrol in Licei

Italy is facing a tremendous waste of human capital. Hundreds of thousands of well-educated young people struggle to find jobs, and when they do, they often end up in roles that have little to do with the skills they spent years acquiring through their studies. This is a loss we can no longer afford. Each year, about 100,000 people leave our workforce. Four years ago, only one in twenty companies reported staffing shortages; today, nearly one in two can’t fill vacant positions. To address this waste, we need to start with early childhood education, improve the quality of schools by valuing teachers’ work, and establish vocational pathways in higher education. Unfortunately, we are missing the opportunity presented by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr) to tackle these deep-rooted problems in Italy’s education system.