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When the Journey Reverses: Telling Italy to Those Who Dream of Studying Far from Home
Summary
For years, I've accompanied Italian students who wished to pursue their university studies outside of Italy. This time, however, the perspective reversed, and it was precisely this that made the experience so interesting. Working as Italy Country Expert for Briteguides, I found myself doing the reverse journey: telling about Italy, its university system, its opportunities, and also its complexities, to international students, families, and counselors who are looking at my country as a possible study destination.
This change of direction made me reflect on a point that I consider central to my work: studying abroad doesn't just mean moving geographically, but entering into a new relationship with the world, with others, and with oneself. In this sense, talking about Italy to those who live elsewhere was not just an informative exercise, but also a way to question myself about the profound value of educational exchange, about the meaning of internationalization, and about what a study experience, in Italy or elsewhere, can truly leave in a person's life.
From departing to welcoming
For a long time, in my guidance work for study abroad, I have mostly seen an outflow. Italian students looking to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, or other European countries as places to find training more suited to their aspirations, or simply a context in which to measure themselves against the world in a new way.
It's a movement I know well and continue to follow every day, through tailor-made paths, where I try to help students and families understand not only where to go, but why, with what goals, and with what tools. Precisely for this reason, being asked to contribute to an international guide on Italy seemed, right from the start, something symbolically very strong: for once it wasn't about explaining how to leave, but about explaining why come.
And I must say that this perspective reversal I liked it very much. There's also a small ironic element, if you will: after years spent explaining to Italian students how to navigate portals, application systems, and procedures from other countries, I found myself doing the opposite, that is, explaining to foreign students how to orient themselves within our pathways, our portals, our calls for applications, and our logic. However, in the end, the core of the work has remained identical: translating complexity, building bridges, helping people better understand where they are going.
Why Studying Abroad Really Matters
When talking about studying abroad, we still too often tend to reduce everything to a matter of prestige, the English language, or professional opportunities. These are indeed real and important aspects, but they don't encompass the full meaning of the experience. Studying in another country means, first and foremost, changing your perspective on the world. It means stepping out of what is familiar, suspending your habits, and discovering that many of the things we took for granted—in relationships, in school, in communication—are actually just one of many existing possibilities.
From an educational perspective, this passage is extraordinarily fruitful. Universities are not just places where information is accumulated or credits are obtained, but spaces where identities, relationships, and visions of the future are built. When this experience takes place in an international context, learning inevitably broadens: it's no longer just about the content of a course, but about the daily encounter with other ways of speaking, reasoning, disagreeing, collaborating, and imagining adult life.
In my work method, This aspect is always central. I never consider the choice of a country or university solely in terms of rankings, reputation, or job prospects. The most interesting, and also the most difficult, question is always another: who will you become living and studying in that context?
The Transcultural Mind, Between Education and Complexity
This idea of transcultural mind it reminds us that learning is not just accumulating knowledge, but changing the way we look at what surrounds us. In a time of easy answers and mental blocks, studying abroad trains us to manage uncertainty and confront differences.
Those who study in another country almost always learn to live with a certain amount of disorientation. They have to interpret new codes, understand how relationships work, and adapt to unwritten rules that no one has explicitly taught them. It's a process that can be tiring, certainly, but it's also one of the most effective ways to develop independence, mental flexibility, and the ability to see reality from multiple perspectives.
For this reason, I consider international experience, both outgoing and incoming, to be more than just an academic step. It is a form of education in complexity, training in holding together different identities, divergent expectations, and different languages. And if this is true for Italian students who go abroad, it is equally true for international students who choose to come to Italy.
If you're just starting out and have practical doubts, you can consult my guide “How to Study Abroad: A Useful Guide”, where I explain the first steps to take. I discuss it in even more detail in my book, a tool designed for those who want a clear roadmap.
Telling Italy to those who look at it from the outside
And this is where the work done with Briteguides comes in. In contributing to the Italy Quick Reference Guide, I tried to tell the story of Italy not as a postcard, but as a Royal University System, rich in opportunities and at the same time complex, with rules to be understood, deadlines to be respected, and choices to be made consciously.
One of the central messages of the guide is that Italy is not just one of the Most affordable study destinations in Europe, but also one of the richest in terms of academic, cultural diversity, and overall experience. Italian public universities, for example, apply income-based taxes and they don't automatically differentiate between Italian and international students like in many other systems, an element that makes the country interesting for many families. Added to this is the presence of over 90 public and private universities, centers of excellence, courses in Italian, and international programs in English, all within a system fully integrated into the European Higher Education Area.
Precisely because Italy is a fascinating destination, it's important not to oversimplify it. Those looking at our country from abroad must know that there isn't a single centralized application system, that procedures vary from university to university, and that for non-European students, Universitaly, the government portal for pre-enrollment, also comes into play. For this reason too, a clear guide can make a difference: it helps transform a generic fascination for Italy into a reasoned and practical choice.
Putting emotions, information, and expectations in order is often a first step. I've also shared some practical tools for doing so in “Building connections for a study abroad pathway”, where I talk about passion journals, campus visits, and concrete ways to approach this choice more consciously.
Italy as an experience, not just a destination
There’s another aspect that’s very important to me. Studying in Italy doesn’t just mean enrolling in a degree program at a certain university. It means experiencing’Training experience in a country where study is continuously intertwined with urban space, with the cultural heritage, with language, with the way of being together.
Italian universities, with a few exceptions, are not designed as separate campuses. They are often immersed in the urban fabric, in historic centers, in transportation networks, in neighborhoods, and in daily life. This naturally presents challenges, but it also offers a very unique kind of experience, where learning is not limited to the classroom and extends to real life, relationships, the rhythms of the city, and regional differences.
For many international students, this comes as a surprise. They expect the Italy of beauty, art, and cuisine, and they certainly find it. But they also discover a complex system, a distributed university life, and a way of learning that engages with the city, the language, informal networks, and opportunities for daily interaction. It is precisely this stratification, in my opinion, that makes Italy such an interesting educational destination for those seeking not just a degree, but a full experience.
An idea that also runs through the project of my book “Students to the Whole World!”born from observing how students and families transform when they begin to view the world as a possible space for study and life.
A reversal that says something about the present
There is something very current, and ultimately encouraging, in the fact that today the student movement is no longer just one-way. For many years in Italy, we primarily looked at those who were leaving. Today, more and more often, we can also look at those who are arriving. This does not erase the problems of our university system, which exist and must be addressed, but it indicates that Italy can be an active participant in a Richer and more mature international educational exchange.
It seems like an important step from a cultural point of view as well. Welcoming international students isn't just about increasing numbers or “internationalizing” an educational offering. It means rethinking universities as places where different perspectives meet, where we too, as a system and as a country, learn something from those who arrive. International education in Italy is growing and becoming an increasingly attractive high-quality option, especially for students coming from overseas.
From this perspective, working as the Italy Country Expert for Briteguides has been much more than professional recognition for me. It has been a way to give voice, in an international context, to the idea that the best education always arises from the encounter between differences, from mutual curiosity, and from the ability to read the world in a non-simplified way.
The meaning of my work, today
Ultimately, whether I am accompanying an Italian student abroad or helping someone from the other side of the world come to Italy, the goal is the same. I work with both young people aiming to go abroad and international students who contact me to understand how to enter the Italian or European university system.
In my personalized orientation paths, I work precisely on this: building choices that are sustainable, realistic, ambitious enough, and consistent with each student's story. There is no absolute perfect country, and there is no perfect university for everyone. Rather, there is dialogue between desires, abilities, family context, financial resources, personal maturity, and life project.
Those who are curious to delve deeper into these topics can find many of these threads in other articles from blog, for example in the post “How to study abroad: everything you need to know" where I discuss useful tools and steps for turning ideas into concrete actions.
If you recognize yourselves (students and families) in some of the questions that run through these lines and are thinking about a university path in Italy or abroad, on the Services page I explain how I work. I invite you to contact me to build a personalized study plan together.
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