May 2020

UNISPORT-IT promotes dual career at the Italian university level

On May 8, 2020, the Italian University Sports System Network UNISPORT-IT organized the first webinar on the dual career of student-athletes. More than 50 people representing their respective Universities, the President of the Athletes Committee of the Italian Olympic Committee (Raffaella Masciadri), the President of the EAS network (Prof. Laura Capranica) and the Italian Olympic Committee delegate at Unisport-IT (Paola Mora) attended the webinar confirming the paramount importance and relevance of dual career in Europe.

Prof. Stefano Bastianon (University of Bergamo) presented a thorough description of the relevance dual career and the state of the art in the Italian university system, which includes 89 universities. Based on a survey administered in 2018, out of the 71 responding universities, 22 declared to have adopted a formal dual career programme, 17 declared to have adopted only some measures aimed at facilitating the dual career of student-athletes, 7 declared to be about to adopt a dual career programme and 29 declared to have adopted no programme.

Support services offered to student-athletes were organized in 9 categories:

1. financial support (scholarship, fee exemption);
2. learning support (tutoring, E-learning);
3. flexibility (exams schedule, lessons schedule);
4. gap year;
5. ECTS;
6. part-time;
7. accommodation facilities;
8. sports facilities;
9. job placement.

In particular, tutoring resulted from the most common service provision (19 out of 22), whereas before the COVID-19 pandemic only 3 Universities offer E-learning. Lastly, Prof. Bastianon prioritized three main aspects to be addressed in the near future:

1. monitoring (e.g., number of universities involved in dual-career, support services offered to student-athletes, the actual number of student-athletes, level of academic performance of student-athletes);
2. development of a dual career culture among the stakeholders (education sector, sports sector, financial sector);
3. elaboration of national guidelines on dual-career particularly focusing on the eligibility criteria of student-athletes to dual-career programmes and the minimum quality dual career services for university dual-career programmes.

During the general discussion, the EAS President invited the participants to follow the progress of EU-funded projects relevant for a dual-career at the university level, particularly focused on:

• development of guidelines for higher education institutes (More than Gold);
• a European dual-career toolkit (Starting 11, https://starting11.eu);
• an educational model for dual-career parenting (EMPATIA, https://www.empatiasport.eu);
• migrating athletes (AMID, https://blogi.eoppimispalvelut.fi/amid/);
• on the media representation of student-athletes (ED MEDIA);
• on female student-athletes (DONA).

UNISPORT-IT (https://blogi.eoppimispalvelut.fi/amid/) is a member of EAS with the aim to:

1. promote and strengthen the role of sport in scientific research as a source of inspiration in all academic disciplines and in interdisciplinary projects;
2. promote new forms of education (formal and informal) that use sport as a tool for developing transversal skills;
3. promote sport as a tool for social inclusion, integration, overcoming the ideological and cultural barriers linked to gender and nationality;
4. make sport an integral part of the university experience, as a factor of sociality, aggregation, sense of belonging and as a tool for healthy and sustainable lifestyles.