Former Status of The Laurea Degree
Until very recently, lauree (plural for laurea) took much longer to earn than undergraduate degrees elsewhere in Europe and North America. To earn a laurea, the student had to complete 4 to 6 years of university courses (though it was customary to describe progress in terms of number of exams passed, rather than years), and also complete a thesis, which in most cases required experimental work. Laureati are customarily addressed as dottore (for a man) or dottoressa (for a woman), i.e. "doctor".
Until the introduction of the Dottorato di ricerca in the mid-1980s, the laurea constituted the highest academic degree obtainable in Italy and allowed the holder to access the highest academic careers. Famous scientists Nobel prize winners such as for example Enrico Fermi, Emilio Segrè, Giulio Natta and Carlo Rubbia held a laurea as their highest degree. The reason is that the Italian laurea included high-level courses and thesis work which normally were sufficient to prepare for a career in research and academia.
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