Italy’s university system has a new research hierarchy, with northern institutions dominating the latest national evaluation. The Italian Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research (ANVUR) has released the results of the 2020–2024 Research Quality Assessment (VQR), the most comprehensive review ever conducted in the country.
The amount of the evaluation is unprecedented: 132 institutions, more than 75,000 researchers, and nearly 200,000 research outputs were assessed, alongside hundreds of case studies and international projects.
Among public universities, the University of Padua ranks first with a score of 1.065. It is followed closely by the University of Trento (1.060), which had topped the previous evaluation cycle. The University of Milan and the University of Milan-Bicocca share third place with a score of 1.057. At the bottom of the ranking are the universities of Messina, Molise, and Basilicata.
In the private sector, Bocconi University leads with a significantly higher score of 1.150, ahead of Luiss Guido Carli and Humanitas University. These rankings carry major financial implications, as public funding allocations are partly determined by ANVUR’s evaluations.