Where we are now: Teaching

The Normale aims for the highest possible level of permanent and recurrent university and post-university teaching, with emphasis on the relationship between teaching and research.

Its teaching model is based on its limited number of students – identified on the basis of a highly selective admission exam focussing on merit – and on a teaching syllabus (opportunely defined and monitored) structured in such a way as to refine and strengthen both the spirit of criticism and methodological rigour.

The mainstay of the study course is the integration between teaching and research, made possible by the constant and profitable interaction between the various components of the Scuola: undergraduate and PhD students and researchers. In particular, since the ratio between lecturers and students is virtuous, lecturers are able to devote extreme attention and continuity to their students. The support services, moreover, are carefully designed and personalised by the competent offices in order to provide the best possible study and research experience.

In order to give deserving students without financial means the opportunity of a university education, the study courses at the Normale are free of charge: the university enrolment fees are reimbursed in full and the internal courses are free. In addition, the Normale guarantees free board and lodging and assigns a yearly grant to all its students. In this way it pulls out all the stops needed for it to perform the necessary and welcome function – albeit inevitably late, given its intervention at an advanced stage of the educational cycle – of a social ladder, and of an incentive to territorial mobility. Concerning the PhD courses, the recent results of the ministerial accreditation of the courses also confirm the quality of the post lauream courses of the Normale, in terms both of the qualification of the lecturers and of the results obtained by students during and after their study course. In fact, the MIUR assessment places the Normale at the national apex regarding the quality of its PhD colleges, the internationalisation of the  student body and its services and resources.
As regards the impact of its teaching on the future career of its undergraduate and PhD students, the Normale offers services and opportunities for placements, including through personalised professional consultation channels.