Staging Though the Pandemic. Evaluation and Communication in the University

In the pandemic, universities suffered of the rapid change into online lecturing and most of their campuses were empty and rather useless. Above all, their relations did not only and drastically evolve to online ones with students, but also with stakeholders like firms. Firms have always supplied to Italian universities resources, collaborations, projects and stages. Stages were interrupted during lockdown and stringency. Nevertheless, as soon as firms were re-opened, stages re-started in available months during the emergency period, from February 2020 to March 2022. In Milan, IULM University experienced immediate recovery of stages and internships. From the beginning of pandemic in February 2020 to the end of emergency in March 2022, more than 330 stages were counted for students of degree programmes about culture and tourism, and it can be considered that cultural and tourism industries tremendously slowed down during the stringency. The aim of this paper is to estimate how much universities are today evaluated for their matching with job markets thanks to stages and while the stage is for their students the first entry in job markets. Thanks to their versatile communication with several and different stakeholders, universities can be evaluated and ranked for their students’ and laureates’ employability. The methodology includes a stepwise multiple regression of the satisfaction of firms, whose boards supplied stages to IULM students in cultural and tourism industries. The corporate tutors’ satisfaction for 328 stages are here estimated for main items of standard questionnaires.