STEM AND ITS IMPACT ON NATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A CASE STUDY CONCERNING SOUTHERN ITALY

European institutions are implementing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education to improve: quality of services, costs reducing, user time saving, increasing effectiveness and efficiency in all sectors. This is the expected outcome from each government. In this way, STEM is strongly related to the economic development. That is why STEM became one of the primary strategies of the Italian government. This study will show the bottleneck related to STEM implementation and their impact on the economic development of the south of Italy. The paper answers the following question: Why in the South of Italy most of STEM projects fail? How risks can be reduced? All these topics must be investigated. Such a view rejects a stance whereby the STEM could be regarded as ultimately unchangeable. It must instead be seen as under constant development and re-interpretation.