Politecnico di Milano ranked first for communication in Italia

What determines a university's reputation and its ability to attract students and businesses is no longer just its teaching and research, but its ability to communicate externally, which helps multiply the value of the results achieved on all fronts. This is the conviction of Marcella Logli, Director of the Communication and Public Engagement Area of the Politecnico di Milano, which ranks first among Italian universities and seventh globally, tied with MIT in the research conducted by Lundquist on 118 Italian and international universities, entitled .university - Global University Ranking 2026. Lundquist's history and the method adopted in producing the rankings makes it possible to understand which universities have understood the importance of positioning themselves with the same strategic logic on a company's communication and which ones less so. The Politecnico di Milano has made a real cultural leap in the seven-year term of Chancellor Donatella Sciuto, to the point that this result can be read "not as a ranking to be celebrated, but as the sign of a now very clear change: communication contributes directly to the reputation, attractiveness and competitiveness of a university. In the education market, it is no longer enough to produce value through research, teaching and innovation: it is also necessary to know how to make it readable, credible and distinctive for students, families, partners, companies and stakeholders,' says Logli.

The global higher education market is increasingly competitive and international, and the way a university presents, narrates and distinguishes itself in its digital channels increasingly determines its external perception. Lundquist's .university - Global University Ranking 2026 research assesses the ability of universities to build their attractiveness through five areas: identity and positioning, student experience and inclusion, research and knowledge transfer, sustainability and social impact, and alumni relations. It follows that university communication is no longer an ancillary function, but a lever that directly affects reputation, attractiveness, clarity of positioning and the ability to make identity, research, impact and relations with different audiences readable.

Logli emphasises that for the Politecnico di Milano, this issue is part of a path that has been underway for some time and that has also involved the creation of a team that has played a very important role in this work. In recent years it has "been renewed with resources and skills that are increasingly in line with the new professions of communication, from brand design to UX/UI to digital marketing," explains Logli. "This has made it possible to approach the project not as a simple graphic or editorial intervention, but as an integrated work on identity, content, user experience and coherence of the overall ecosystem. The real challenge for a university is not to communicate more, but to communicate better: with more clarity, more coherence and less self-referentiality. Because it is not enough to produce value; you also have to know how to make it understandable'.

The path started is part of a long work on brand identity, which began as early as 2024. "The point was not simply to update the brand, but to reinforce the coherence, clarity and recognisability of the University's narrative on all touchpoints, from online to offline," says Logli. "The project was developed as a shared path, with the involvement of the Communications and Cultural Activities Delegate Umberto Tolino, the governance led by the Rector Donatella Sciuto and the various components of the Politecnico, also with a view to coherence with the institution's academic identity. From this approach also derives "the work on the new digital and visual ecosystem, conceived not as an aesthetic exercise but as an infrastructure of coherence," Logli concludes. "Brand, content, digital environments, user experience and narrative quality today combine to build trust, recognisability and relations with different audiences.