What are university satellite campuses for? A perspective on their contribution to Italian municipalities and regions

ABSTRACT

This paper is the first to present a long-term retrospective overview of the impact of Italian university satellite campuses (SCs), since Decree n. 509 of 1999 fostered a massive increase in the number of SCs, even in small municipalities around 10,000 residents. By drawing on a novel panel dataset aggregated at the urban level for the period 2000–20, findings show that SCs increased the number of graduates at the regional level. However, SCs alone have uneven effects on population trends and income at the urban level. They should be periodically reviewed and redesigned to address structural changes and local development.

KEYWORDS:

• depopulation
• event analysis
• human capital
• peripheral campus
• regional campus
• urban development

JEL:

• I23
• I25
• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is included in the project ‘Innovation and Vulnerability. Legal issues and Remedies’ of the Department of Law, University of Macerata (funded by the Ministry of University and Research, programme Departments of Excellence 2023–27).

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The universities included in this study are those legally recognised by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR). For the full list, see http://ustat.miur.it/dati/didattica/italia/atenei

2. MUR; http://dati.ustat.miur.it/dataset/laureati

3. Italian universities are classified by size, as follows: total number of university students more than 40,000 (mega-university); between 20,000 and 39,900 university students (big university); between 19,900 and 10,000 university students (medium university); and fewer than 10,000 university students (small university) (ISTAT, 2016).

4. The Bologna Process seeks to bring more coherence to higher education systems across Europe; http://www.ehea.info/. Following the Bologna process, Decree n. 509 of 3 November 1999 was enacted in 2001.

5. Since our sample covers the period from 2000 to 2020, then r = {−20, −19, … , 0, +1, … , +19}.