Universities are gaining freshmen: +0.9% enrolment on 2023 and +4% on 2022

For now, Italian universities do not seem to be affected by the demographic winter that has already begun to hit schools for years. Confirmation comes from the first surveys conducted by the Ministry of Universities on enrolments for the 2024/25 academic year, which show a slight increase (+0.9%) in December compared to the same period in 2023/24. However, the growth becomes more noticeable (+4.1%) if we compare it with 2022/23.

Although these are provisional statistics, which may be affected by the slowness with which some universities communicate their data to Mur, they nevertheless seem indicative in order to understand the air in higher education circles. And they become even more interesting if we place them in a context such as the Italian one, in which a degree ensures an 11% higher employment rate than a diploma and in which, unfortunately, the number of graduates is still too low. Especially if we consider that, as ISTAT reminded us this summer, the share of 25-64 year-olds with a tertiary degree (20.3%) is lower than the European average (34.3%) and is about half that recorded in France and Spain (41.6% and 41.1% respectively).

Currently, enrolments are growing. As of December 2024, 307,924 new students had enrolled at the university, compared to 304,920 this time last year and 295,660 two academic years ago. As is often the case, it is the 176,277 girls who are pulling the strings, outnumbering their male colleagues by almost 45,000 (131,647 matriculations). Among women, the growth in freshmen is 2.1% over 2023/24 and 5.8% over 2022/23. Among boys, the balance is -0.6 per cent and +1.9 per cent, respectively, compared to the similar figures for the previous two years.

If we move on from the overall numbers to a breakdown by subject area, we discover that the majority of Italian university students (more than one in three) continue to prefer economics, law and social sciences degrees: their 103,684 newly enrolled students for the 2024/25 academic year exceed both last year's 101,029 (+2.6%) and the 102,338 of two years ago. Again, the majority is represented by members of the 'gentle sex', who account for 59.2% of the total enrolments.

The script is the same in two of the other three areas examined: the health and agro-veterinary group, which has 55,477 freshmen, an increase of 0.5% compared to 2023/24 and even 20.8% compared to 2022/23 (thanks mainly to the increase in the number of places available for Medicine, ed.), and sees the female component at 61.7% of enrolled students; the arts, literature and education group, which, however, shows a decrease compared to 12 months ago (-0.6%) and where women account for more than 77% of enrolments.