Case Study on the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy

Bozen/Bolzano is situated in a trilingual region in Italy of which the three mother tongue languages are German, Italian, and Ladin (the latter only spoken by 4 percent of the population). The aim of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, which was founded in 1997 and launched its first programmes in 1998, is to offer its students a multilingual, practice-oriented education that meets the demands of the local and the European labour market. Trilingual educational activities are conducted in German, Italian, and English in the case of the School of Economics and its courses and in the course programmes in Industrial Engineering. The only exception is found in the Faculty of Education. This Faculty offers the German-, Italian-, and Ladin-speaking students separate training sections.