The Italian university system, along the mainstream of the European higher education systems, is adopting efficiency and effectiveness as criteria for process programming and result managing. For this purpose, both the national system headed by the Ministry of Edu- tion, University and Research, and the universities, within their managerial autonomy, activated since the 1990s a systematic assessment of their research and teaching activities and of other services. The assessment on a large scale of aspects of the educational system started in Italy when the Ministry imposed in 1999 that the teaching of each course of Bachelor and Master programmes be evaluated by the student and that s- thetic marks be sent to a National Board for University System Evaluation (CNVSU) for comparative and intervention purposes. The compelling need to assess the course quality not only demolished the atavic distrust that part of the academics have had against the assessment of the teaching, but also started, in a concrete way, the participation of students to activities dedicated to them. Moreover, the widespread consciousness of teaching assessment, as a tool for empowering the higher education system, entered the Ministry and universities' agenda. Even though the use of the course evaluations, for intervention purposes, still is limited to the most fanciful and fearless faculties and universities, the process has started and it will not be easy to circumvent.

Inhalt
Effectiveness of University Education.- Informative Sources for the Evaluation of the University Education Effectiveness in Italy.- A Fuzzy Measure of Satisfaction for University Education as a Key for Employment.- A Multilevel Analysis of Graduates' Job Satisfaction.- Quality Assessment of the University Educational Process: an Application of the ECSI Model.- Evaluating the University Educational Process. A Robust Approach to the Drop-out Problem.- A Structural Model of the Employment Pathways of the University of Foggia Graduates.- Measurement of University External Effectiveness Based on the Use of the Acquired Skills.- Employability of Graduates.- Graduates' Job Quality Dimensions According to a Delphi-Shang Experiment.- Networks of Weak Ties of Padua University Graduates Searching for Employment.- University Choices and Work Destinies in Italy.- Accept or Refuse a Job? How Graduates Decide.- A Multilevel Chain Graph Model for the Analysis of Graduates' Employment.- Transition from University to the Job Market. A Time Analysis of the University of Cagliari Graduates.- The Determinants of Graduates' Placement. Analysis of Interactions Using Boolean Logit Models.- The Transition from University to the Job Market. An Emigration Analysis of the University of Cagliari Graduates.- University Studies and Employment. An Application of the Principal Strata Approach to Causal Analysis.- Is the Length of the First Job Search Spell a Valid Measure of External Effectiveness of University Programmes?.- Competence Analysis.- Competence-based Compatibility between Jobs and University Curricula.- The Ideal Candidate. Analysis of Professional Competences through Text Mining of Job Offers.- Companies, Competences and Graduates' Selection Processes: an Attempt toQuantify.- Tesserae of Graduates' Competences for Mosaics of Work Activities.- Competences Offered to Statisticians by the Italian Universities and Required by the Job Market.- Jobs and Competences of Graduates in Statistics.- Academic Training and Competence Analysis of Social Work.- Profiling and Labour Market Accessibility for the Graduates in Economics at Naples University.- University Human Capital.- Human Capital Growth for University Education Evaluation.- Estimating University Human Capital through Growth Models.