Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Monday appealed for the government to review planned spending cuts in the university sector that resulted in weeks of strikes by students and staff last year.
''I hope the time may now be ripe to rethink and review budget choices marked by indiscriminate cuts,'' Napolitano said during an address at Perugia University.
Napolitano said it was his ''constitutional duty'' to make a public appeal on what he said was a ''crucial theme'', stressing the importance of research and education for development, without which he said the Italian economy could not compete on the world stage.
The president said reform of the university system should take into account the results of individual universities, adding that systems in Europe and the rest of the world ''could suggest'' solutions for Italy.
Referring to the so-called 'brain drain' of researchers leaving Italy for better-paid positions abroad, Napolitano appealed to ''all the responsible powers in the country'' to commit to ''avoiding the dispersion of talent and results that are too often undervalued''.
The government has planned spending cuts of an estimated 1.5 billion euros in the sector from 2010.
