While Italian students blocked traffic, threw eggs and tussled with police in an attempt to show their displeasure with the Berlusconi government’s education reform, they’ll need to do a lot more than that to make any serious changes in the system.

The students have a right to be angry, but neither Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi nor his Education Minister, Mariastella Gelmini, should be the object of their wrath.

Italy has a glorious university history, and half of the oldest 10 or 12 universities in Europe are Italian (starting with Bologna nearly 1,000 years ago) but its present is pretty pathetic.

The hallmarks of Italian public universities today are overcrowded classrooms, crummy facilities, and lots of professors who couldn’t seem to care in the least about their students.

So while students make a show of their anger across Italy, blocking highways, and taking over the Leaning Tower of Pisa, what they really need to do is to work not on a reform but on a complete overhaul of the higher education system.

It’s certainly too late for them, but they might be able to get something in place that would work for their children or their grandchildren.