Three priorities for USI's next four-year term 2021-2024: consolidation, cohesion and service

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Institutional Communication Service

23 June 2020

Consolidation, cohesion and service are the words that sum up USI's overall strategy as defined in the Planning for the period 2021-2024. The document is the result of the joint work of about thirty members of the USI community at all levels, from collaborators to full professors, who were invited to share their ideas in the context of a project aimed at defining priorities for the University's development. A cross-functional project involving the entire academic community and central bodies, including the Rectorate, the Management board, the Academic Senate and the University Council. From today - following the press conference announced by the Canton to present the Cantonal University Policy 2021-2024 - the document is available online in its entirety attached to this page.

After the development phase of the first 20 years, the first objective - consolidation - focuses on strengthening the successful academic structures that USI has been able to devise and develop, rather than launching new projects. This will also involve consolidating the overall academic structure of Ticino, carrying on the process of progressive convergence and synergy between the institutions of the region.

The second objective aims at achieving a greater cohesion in the academic community, both from an organisational point of view, thanks to the progressive maturity that will be reached by the new governing bodies, and from a scientific point of view, investing in one of the distinctive features of USI, namely interdisciplinarity.

As a third objective, work will be carried out to strengthen the service that the University intends to offer to the region: in addition to research and training, USI is now sufficiently mature to fulfill its "third mandate" at a strategic level. The aim is thus to further improve the transfer of knowledge from the scientific to the economic sector, but also to strengthen those activities that aim to create a bridge between society and academic knowledge in the broadest sense.

Fully endorsing the strategic approach defined at national level by swissuniversities, digitisation and sustainability will be the areas in which USI's educational, scientific and managerial attention will focus, within the framework of the increasing consolidation of the University in the national academic setting.  

Planning 21-24 contains, on the one hand, a detailed vision of USI's development in the field of education and research, detailing the contribution offered by Faculties and Institutes; on the other hand, it sets out a number of priorities, including measures to increase the number of students and to fully benefit from the potential offered by the work of researchers. Noteworthy at an organisational level is the investment in updating the information system.  

From a financial point of view, the necessary cost-containment efforts that started in recent years will be carried out also in the next four years. It will begin to bear fruit in 2022, with a return to a positive balance and the chance to develop important new strategic projects.