L’insegnamento universitario delle discipline economico-aziendali: un’indagine sul settore scientifico-disciplinare SECS P07 nelle Facoltà di Economia

This paper presents the results of research carried out to investigate teaching of “economico-aziendali” subjects in the Italian Faculties of Economics, which by tradition have a strong bias towards subjects from the scientific field “SECS P/07 - Economia Aziendale”. The more recently set up Faculties with a specific orientation towards subjects such as Business Administration or Business for Management were excluded from the research. The research mapped all the Degree programmes taught in the 1° Cycle Degree courses belonging to the classes 17/L18 and 28/L33 of the Economics Faculties in the academic year 2009/2010. An analysis was then carried out of the number, position in the Degree programme and names of all the subjects belonging to SECS P07. The results show: a) a predominance of subjects from class 17/L18 in the 1° Cycle Degree courses, with a frequent doubling up of disciplines (introduction of two subjects) within the programmes. In addition, the overall weight of the credits from SECS P07 on the total for the three-year Degree courses studied was significant (almost 13%); b) as far as the position of these subjects is concerned, they were predominantly placed in the first year (and in the second and third years in descending order). This preference was confirmed when an analysis was made of the Degree programmes divided according to the classes to which they belong; c) while there was an overall variety of subjects which were identified using specific taxonomy, the majority of courses of a general nature (i.e. not dealing with specific business studies) had traditional titles, of which the most popular was “Economia Aziendale”, and these were more common than more specific subjects. In the latter, greater attention was dedicated to companies from the public sector.