Skills at the Center of the Digital and Green Transition

The international dimension of higher professional training is crucial for the competitiveness and attractiveness of territories, but there is still much to be done. We talked about it with Serse Soverini, Operation Director of the Associazione Scuola Politecnica ITS Emilia Romagna (ITS Emilia Romagna Polytechnic School Association).

“By internationalizing the training of ITS courses” – Soverini tells us – “we do not only mean the acquisition of technological skills for which there are European reference parameters, but also the development of transversal skills, the soft skills and the ability to work in teams with people who have been trained in different contexts“. In this sense, a comparison with international companies is crucial in order to have a European alignment.

The critical aspect is to make the international experience meaningful. At the same time, however, it is also the most challenging aspect.

“There is a strong interest, for example, in transversal skills regarding the digital transition and there is a common platform at European level within which it is possible to encourage and support the circulation of young people within common quality tertiary and professional training courses.”

Another very important element is the relationship with the territory, by taking into account the specificities of regional ecosystems and their relationship with the international dimension.

“In Italy we work a lot on niches, but there are more general skills, for example on green and digital, which can certainly be acquired by looking at countries that hold leadership in Europe” – continues Soverini – “and therefore combine experience linguistics with the acquisition of advanced skills in these two fields”.

This makes it essential to share and define points of excellence in Europe that promote mobility.

“Professionalizing tertiary training has a very different educational approach from the academic one: the model is based on the transfer of know-how, so our ITS courses are also based on this. For a young person, the experience of transferring know-how in another country is very important”

The ability to read the international dimension of innovation and translate it within the company and in the training of trainers is a key element in being able to build a network of subjects who share common skills. Just as it happens more easily for university courses, even for professional ones “it would be important to imagine a network and unified paths in the definition of skills”.

“The DIG.INT project works a lot on the network and on a European scale and this is very interesting for us, we will continue to look very carefully at the project and its developments”.