Pasquale Graduated in Business Administration While in Prison

THE PROJECT, LAUNCHED IN 2016 BY BOCCONI AND THE LOMBARD PENITENTIARY ADMINISTRATION, SAW ITS FIRST GRADUATE IN THE APRIL SESSION. IN JULY, TWO MORE INMATES WILL COMPLETE THEIR DEGREES

Pasquale Genovese is the first prisoner to graduate in business administration and management from Bocconi University. Forty-five years old, inmate at the correctional facility in Opera (Milan), Pasquale defended his thesis entitled "From idea to realization: how to develop a hospitality project by integrating art, culture, technology and tourism" in the online Bachelor degree session that was held in mid-April. Pasquale is the first, but not the only one: in the upcoming July session, two other people will complete their study path.

It all started in 2016, when Bocconi University and the Penitentiary Administration of Lombardy launched a social mobility and re-education project aimed at giving prisoners in Italian prisons the opportunity to attend courses in the Bachelor program in business administration and management. The project involves 24 Bocconi instructors and is open to a maximum of 10 students per year chosen from inmates serving sentences of over 5 years. They are dentified by merit ranking among prisons throughout Italy who have received a favorable opinion from of the Prison Administration. To be admitted, candidates must pass the standard admission test to the University's Bachelor of Science programs.

"The initiative enhances some of the values on which Bocconi University is based, those of an open society, solidarity and social mobility. The aim of this project is to offer students in detention an opportunity not only for intellectual and professional enrichment, but also personal growth thanks to the constant human relationship between teachers and students", explains Carlo Salvato, Bocconi professor of corporate strategy and project coordinator . "Some of them will be able to find work in the future thanks to the Bocconi degree, as has already happened to one of those who will soon graduate".

Once the program has started, the teachers send recordings of the classroom lessons to prison and, thanks to the support of the administration and the prison police, they go to Opera to meet the students and hold exams in person the educational area of the prison.

“For more than ten years I have dedicated myself to university studies and culture in general, first with sociology then with philosophy and finally with economics. I realized that culture is perhaps the only real wealth that man has available. Obviously regardless of the feelings, values and principles that everyone has, "Genovese later wrote in a letter to the University. "Material wealth such as cars and money are ephemeral because they can disappear overnight. Culture, however, once absorbed, metabolized and settled within us, is a thing that nobody can take away. We can't lose it and they can't steal it. " And, referring to the topic of his thesis, he explains: "The work that I propose in my thesis is not only an entrepreneurial idea but also the desire to remedy the wrong that I have done to my family and my country".

by Andrea Celauro
Translated by Richard Greenslade