A Critique of “Massification, Competition and Organizationl Diversity in Higher Education”

The growth of trends in adult education that has affected higher education and encouraged diversity among the university system, which has caught the attention of adult students including myself. In the article “Massification, Competition, and Organizational Diversity in Higher Education: Evidence from Italy” by Federica Rossi (2010), the author investigates whether and inquire about the degree that various trends motivating diversity among higher institutions of adult learning, which has occurred in universities within the last couple of decades, such as massification, privatization, and competition for students and research funding. The author uses a multidimensional approach to examine the effects of adult education trends on higher education organizational diversity using data from state and private universities in Italy. The article shows the history, changes and the growth of inter-institutional diversity operations of Italian university system and the policies governing universities. The existing data on Italy’s higher education size, specialization, and mission- orientation are explored to answer if these trends have encouraged organizational diversity. According to Rossi (2010), the stimulation of organization diversity has been “widely debated, both empirically and theoretically” (p.277). In my opinion, these trends have forced universities to become more diverse and to deal with current issues or trend facing adult education at the present.
The author uses the existing data on Italy’s universtites from Italian Ministry of University and Research to show information on all the higher institutions in Italy, which are a total of “ninety-three that includes seventy-two universities, ten distance learning, five advance post- graduate and two university for