Graduation Day: Students Back Home with Their Diploma in Their Hands

The Italian Giuliano Decorato (Law) and the Belarusian Kseniya Tsitovich (International Management), this morning, have been the first Bocconi graduates to receive the diploma from the hands of the rector, Gianmario Verona, upon conclusion of the graduation session.

The consignment of the parchment makes graduation day even more solemn and has an environmental impact. Up to yesterday, the University used to send more than 2,000 diplomas per year to the graduates, with a minority coming back to via Sarfatti to pick it up personally. With immediate delivery, packaging, shipping costs and CO2 production due to transport are saved.

"Innovating and always providing the best service to our students is a priority at Bocconi," says Verona. "Thanks to this small technological step that allows us to immediately print the degree certificate, the graduation experience becomes more moving, official and complete".

The immediate handover is an indirect result of the dematerialization process undertaken in recent years by Bocconi's Academic Affairs Division . "Delivery", explains Roberto Grassi, Director of the Division, "is possible because we verbalize the graduation via tablet and thus all the information necessary for the formalization of the title is available in minutes".

"The dematerialization undertaken since 2009," says Grassi, "has been allowing us, so far, to save more than one million sheets of paper per year".

With the graduation session today and tomorrow, the immediate handover of the diploma becomes fully operative. In last October's session there had been a trial, with a slightly postponed delivery, not in the graduation room upon the conclusion of the session, but minutes later, at an office that checked that the whole process had been successful. "The experiment worked," concludes Grassi, "and now all students will have a graduation picture with their diploma in their hands."

"It was exciting", said Kseniya after graduation. "And there is also an important practical implication," noted Giuliano, "because many of us, after graduation, move abroad, and having the original diploma can be useful".

The Rector hands the diploma to Kseniya Titovich:
Above, the handover to Giuliano Decorato