by Paddy Agnew

If you know Italy at all, you will know that the Italian university system does not always enjoy a good press. At best, the average Italian student's third-level experience tends to make Ulysses' wanderings and occasional encounters with one-eyed monsters look like a relative dawdle.

Huge student numbers (there are approximately 130,000 students enrolled at Rome's La Sapienza, for example), chronic underfunding and an archaic exam system that is often more oral than written tend to make an odyssey of the process of graduation, more for logistical and infrastructural reasons than for the academic standards.

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Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/