The Italian approach to the dual careers of University student-athletes

In the last decade, the topic of the dual careers of student-athletes has received increasing attention across Europe, both from many scholars in several different fields and from the European Union. In the European Union lexicon, the term ‘dual career’ means that an athlete can combine, without unreasonable personal effort, their sporting career with education and/or work in a flexible way through high-quality training in order to protect their moral, health, educational and professional interests without compromising either objective, with a particular focus on the continued formal education of young athletes. The basic idea behind several dual career programs to aid the student-athlete is that practicing sport and studying are two time-consuming activities. As a consequence, without special agreements between the sport sector and the educational system pressures and challenges on student-athletes may become excessive and unsustainable, forcing them to choose sport or education. The main purpose of this paper is to show the results of a two-year research project concerning the role of dual career programs as a tool to promote the development of a social Europe. The research project focusses on dual career programs of university student-athletes from 71 universities throughout Italy and the results are based on data collected from each university. These data were then analysed in order to show the degree of involvement of Italian universities in dual career programs, the different kind of support services offered to student-athletes and the geographical spread of dual career programs among universities located in Northern, Central and Southern Italy. The data presented in this paper are updated until 30 October 2018.