What’s Happening in Italian Universities?

A Closer Look at University Trends in Italy

Those who know me are aware of how much I value higher education.

I believe that education is one of the last, true social elevator left in Italy, and I consider myself very fortunate to have grown up in a family where, although there were no graduates, education was always highly valued.

They inspired me to pursue my studies to the highest level possible. It changed my life, and I will be forever thankful to them for that.

Furthermore, I firmly believe, despite some major isolated scandals, that the university is one of the last bastions of meritocracy in Italy. At least that has been my experience; I have always felt like a participant in a "fair" game with "clear" rules.

Small disclaimers before we begin:

• This analysis is based on my personal processing of the publicly available data on the MIUR website (Ministry of University and Research)

  • All datasets used are available here.

  • Python code can be found here

• The interpretations of the trends, graphs, and tables are my personal reflections. I have tried to be as politically agnostic as possible and have aimed to provide a neutral explanation of these trends/phenomena.

• The division between the southern, central, and northern regions is based on the Istat taxonomy.

Let's start by observing the historical series of enrollments, looking at the graph in Figure 1, which represents the number of enrollments per academic year starting from 1999.

Figure 1: New Students enrolments by academic year (1999 on)

Important trends are already visible from here.

"3+2" Reform of 1999/2000

In the early 2000s, a reform of the university system was introduced that "split" the traditional 4-year degree cycles into a 3-year bachelor's degree and a 2-year master's degree (hence the name 3+2 reform).

The possibility of obtaining a university degree in just 3 years instead of 4 aimed to achieve two objectives:

• To encourage enrollments (in the short term)

• To increase the number of graduates in Italy (in the long term), which at the time had one of the lowest rates in the European Union.

In fact, there was a four-year period in which enrollments increased from 280,000 per year to almost 340,000 in 2003/2004.

Moratti Reform of 2003/2004

Following the introduction of the Moratti reform in 2003/2004, the number of enrollments began to decline sharply. What were the causes of that?

• Diminishing effect of the 3+2 reform

  • The three-year degree lost some of its appeal and began to be perceived as an incomplete degree, as the first graduates of the three-year program started entering the job market and struggled to find positions without supplementing their degrees with a master's degree or costly paid master's programs.

• Introduction of the fixed-term researcher position

  • This marked the real beginning of the precarization of this role and the start of the first wave of what is referred to in Italy as "brain drain"

    • Students with academic career ambitions likely began enrolling directly abroad, in countries where it is easier to conduct research and build a rewarding and well-paid career around it

• Centralization of academic recruitment at the ministerial level

  • Resulting in a reduction of autonomy regarding competitions within individual universities.

• Cuts to the Ordinary Funding Fund (FFO - Fondo di finanziamento ordinario), the main public funding instrument for universities

  • This initiated the push for universities to independently seek local financial resources, further widening the gap between northern universities, capable of drawing from wealthier regions, and southern universities.

    • The migratory phenomenon towards the northern regions is very strong, as shown in the graph in figure 2.

      • 78% of graduates from the south enroll in a university in the south, while the remaining 22% is forced to emigrate, with an equal tendency towards both the center and the north.

      • This value is significantly lower than that of graduates from the center and the north. In fact, 97%, almost all graduates from the north who enroll in university stay in their own area.

Figure 2: High school graduates and University Choices by region (%)

2008 Recession, Gelmini Reform of 2009/2010, and All-Time Low

The negative trend was further accelerated by the 2008 recession and the Gelmini reform of 2009/2010, which introduced additional cuts to the FFO and tied these funds to a new evaluation system for teaching that generated considerable controversy.

During this period, the number of enrollments reached a historic low since the Ministry of Education started recording these historical series.

Recovery and Recent Post-Pandemic Trends

Signs of recovery have been noted starting from the academic year 2014/2015. Probably reasons for that may be:

• End of the recession

  • The economic recovery resulted in better access to credit and territorial mobility.

  • The occupationals level recovery led to improved employability of graduates compared to high school diploma holders.

    • This had a real impact on enrollments. You are more inclined to pursue a university path if data confirms that once finished, the employment rate and salary level are higher.

  • Cultural and social shift. The university is no longer seen as a nice-to-have or an elitist cultural circle but as a true social elevator and a means for cultural improvement.

• Introduction of the No-Tax Area in 2017, which made free education accessible to lower-income brackets.

• COVID-19

  • That caused a boom in online universities

  • Eliminatied mobility costs for several years due to the widespread adoption of remote learning even in "traditional" universities, which had to adapt to keep pace.

  • Increased availability of time spent at home possibly encouraged enrollments.

It is also true that the dropout rate in the first year is rapidly rising (unfortunately, data beyond 2022/2023 is not available). While COVID-19 led to a surge in enrollments, it also attracted many who might not have enrolled under different circumstances and who had no real ambitions of completing their university journey (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: First-year dropout rate

Regardless of that, as of today, the number of enrollments per year is very high, reaching a peak in 2023/2024 with almost 350,000 enrollments.

And this has not prevented the number of graduates from steadily increasing in recent years (see figure 4).

Figure 4: Number of graduates per year

The trends related to fields of study are also interesting to observe. Society changes, evolves, and with it, the choices regarding higher education.

Figure 5: Enrollment Growth by Academic Discipline – Indexed to Year 2000

As can be seen from the graph in Figure 5, scientific, industrial, computer, and medical degree programs have seen significant growth in recent years.

Sports science is the fastest-growing program, but it started from very low values at the beginning of the historical series and still today is a degree program with numbers much lower than the others.

The trend of legal studies is peculiar, as they have practically been declining since 2000.

That's all for now!

Stay tuned!