"Lecturers from all over the world for online degree courses with practical training"

Can you tell us your numbers?

We received tens of thousands of applications for the first year, but we tried to be selective. We started the first two classes with a hundred students from 38 countries around the world, Italy, Europe, the USA, Canada, the Middle East and Africa, this year we aim to reach 300 students. We have accredited Opit in Malta, which is the only European country besides Ireland to be a native English speaker, for us this is a very important feature. We want to offer high quality but affordable teaching, around EUR 4,500 per year, with fully online teaching.

The project is very ambitious

Yes, it is an initiative that has to be high profile, the great advantage of starting a university institution from scratch is the opportunity to create an innovative teaching model, the disadvantage is that you have to build a brand from scratch, convince students to choose your proposal and nothing else. And so the only way to make such a venture is to do it with a high profile, with a rector like Profumo and lecturers who come from the university world but have a strong will to innovate. Admission, Didactics and Student Services, these are three key areas in which we have chosen highly experienced people, for example our Academic Director is a lecturer in Machine Learning in Canada, Lorenzo Livi.

Is there a model you have been inspired by?

The fact that online education is associated with low quality is something that characterises Italian culture above all, although not only that, however there are virtuous examples of high-profile online universities such as the Open University in the UK, which was established in the 1990s.

What kind of needs are companies experiencing at this stage when new Ai-based technologies are accelerating?

When we started thinking about this project with the board and advisors, we gathered a lot of input from companies, students and teachers. We also did a lot of market analysis starting for example with World Economic Forum documents, to think about what the main skills will be in the next 5-10 years, so we identified figures such as data scientist or computer scientist or Ai and cybersecurity experts will be the most in demand. Today there is a major shortage of skills, so we needed to speed up and create a complementary model to traditional university education, so that we have many working students.