The history of the designer professional training, completely disregarded in Italy until a few years ago, is recomposing through some recent contributions. However, there are still many crucial steps to be investigated, in particular the one that gave rise to the entrance of design into the Italian public university training system. The text aims to bring to light some significant moments of the debate that, starting from the fifties, accompanies the design in the arduous journey towards its recognition as an academic discipline, until the first public degree course at the Polytechnic of Milan in 1993-94, according to the project realized by Tom\ue1s Maldonado with the collaboration of Italian colleagues and designers. From this early and incomplete survey shows the international nature of the treated events, along with the multifaceted nature of contributions to the formation of the design discipline
