Laurea

In Italy, the laurea is the main post-secondary academic degree. Until very recently, lauree 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". The new system makes no formal provision for degree graduates to be addressed as 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 Enrico Fermi and Carlo Rubbia held a laurea in physics as their highest degree. The reason is that the Italian... full article at wikipedia