Messina’s Hotel Riviera, which has seen better days, is now part of Italy’s bid to brace against domestic demographic decline by attracting more international students. The hotel is now university-owned thanks to the nation’s slice of E.U. pandemic recovery funding.

“About 10 years ago, universities began to feel the impact of shrinking domestic student populations, constant brain drain and diminishing funding for core programs,” Salvatore Cuzzocrea, rector of the University of Messina and president of the Conference of Italian University Rectors, told Times Higher Education.

“Until then, the only real influx of international students came from privileged backgrounds, who came to study Italian art, language and culture,” he said.

Thanks to more than 12 million euros ($12.9 million) in public funding, the Hotel Riviera is now university property and set for a total revamp into a hall of residence. Together with the nearby Hotel Liberty, which has been leased to the university for 15 years, there will be space for an extra 408 beds for out-of-town students—both international students and those coming from other parts of Italy.

Sixty-five percent of the funding comes from Italy’s share of the E.U.’s post-pandemic recovery fund. More widely, the government has set aside €960 million (more than $1 billion) from those E.U. funds, 40 percent of which is intentionally set apart for southern regions, to triple the number of beds available for out-of-town students, bringing the total nationwide from 40,000 to 105,000 by 2026.

Messina’s international student population has “skyrocketed” from just 55 in 2018–19 to more than 900 in 2022–23, and they come from more than 70 countries, Cuzzocrea said.

Pizza-chewing internationals are a welcome sight around town for the rector, but they are also a necessity in a sector bracing itself for demographic decline. A February analysis by the consultancy Talents Venture said the forthcoming fall in the number of 18- to 21-year-olds and a northward drift within Italy in those remaining “constitutes one of the most serious threats to the sustainability of the Italian university system.”

The consultants found that 18 percent of courses had fewer than 20 first-year students last year, with student-linked funding set to fall by more than €600 million ($647 million) between 2020 and 2040, based on population projections. Talents Venture chief executive Pier Giorgio Bianchi said the 15 worst-affected campuses were all in Italy’s south.

While southern universities face the most fearful projections, beds for out-of-town students are a prerequisite for growth at many institutions, with those in the north facing steeper costs.

The University of Milan is spending €20 million ($21.5 million) on purpose-built accommodation for 258 students, with half the funding coming from E.U. recovery funds. Both Italian out-of-towners and international students will have to apply for a bed in the means-tested rooms, which cost €250 ($270) a month.

“In Milan you can’t find a single room for less than €500 or €600. These are new buildings, single rooms, in a good place,” said Marina Brambilla, deputy rector for education and student services at Milan.

“Students need accommodation—this is the first need, and Milan is very, very expensive. Without more accommodation we will have problems,” she said. “Particularly when students come from outside Europe, they want a campus—they don’t want to look on their own for an apartment.”

Messina’s Hotel Riviera, which has seen better days, is now part of Italy’s bid to brace against domestic demographic decline by attracting more international students. The hotel is now university-owned thanks to the nation’s slice of E.U. pandemic recovery funding.

“About 10 years ago, universities began to feel the impact of shrinking domestic student populations, constant brain drain and diminishing funding for core programs,” Salvatore Cuzzocrea, rector of the University of Messina and president of the Conference of Italian University Rectors, told Times Higher Education.

“Until then, the only real influx of international students came from privileged backgrounds, who came to study Italian art, language and culture,” he said.

Thanks to more than 12 million euros ($12.9 million) in public funding, the Hotel Riviera is now university property and set for a total revamp into a hall of residence. Together with the nearby Hotel Liberty, which has been leased to the university for 15 years, there will be space for an extra 408 beds for out-of-town students—both international students and those coming from other parts of Italy.

Sixty-five percent of the funding comes from Italy’s share of the E.U.’s post-pandemic recovery fund. More widely, the government has set aside €960 million (more than $1 billion) from those E.U. funds, 40 percent of which is intentionally set apart for southern regions, to triple the number of beds available for out-of-town students, bringing the total nationwide from 40,000 to 105,000 by 2026.

Messina’s international student population has “skyrocketed” from just 55 in 2018–19 to more than 900 in 2022–23, and they come from more than 70 countries, Cuzzocrea said.

Pizza-chewing internationals are a welcome sight around town for the rector, but they are also a necessity in a sector bracing itself for demographic decline. A February analysis by the consultancy Talents Venture said the forthcoming fall in the number of 18- to 21-year-olds and a northward drift within Italy in those remaining “constitutes one of the most serious threats to the sustainability of the Italian university system.”

The consultants found that 18 percent of courses had fewer than 20 first-year students last year, with student-linked funding set to fall by more than €600 million ($647 million) between 2020 and 2040, based on population projections. Talents Venture chief executive Pier Giorgio Bianchi said the 15 worst-affected campuses were all in Italy’s south.

While southern universities face the most fearful projections, beds for out-of-town students are a prerequisite for growth at many institutions, with those in the north facing steeper costs.

The University of Milan is spending €20 million ($21.5 million) on purpose-built accommodation for 258 students, with half the funding coming from E.U. recovery funds. Both Italian out-of-towners and international students will have to apply for a bed in the means-tested rooms, which cost €250 ($270) a month.

“In Milan you can’t find a single room for less than €500 or €600. These are new buildings, single rooms, in a good place,” said Marina Brambilla, deputy rector for education and student services at Milan.

“Students need accommodation—this is the first need, and Milan is very, very expensive. Without more accommodation we will have problems,” she said. “Particularly when students come from outside Europe, they want a campus—they don’t want to look on their own for an apartment.”

Europe’s premier university group has outlined a blueprint to drive up doctoral supervision standards across the continent, but the group has also acknowledged that some academics might be beyond help.

In a paper published in February, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) says that researchers should have mandatory training in Ph.D. supervision and that the success of those they supervise should be a key factor in appraisals.

But authors Helke Hillebrand and Claudine Leysinger also acknowledge that it might be worth considering “establishing ‘single contributor’ research careers where talented researchers without sufficient people skills can pursue their research goals without being compelled to supervise junior colleagues.”

“Certain people are really extremely introverted, and I believe it’s almost forcing them into something that they’re not happy about doing,” Leysinger, head of the graduate campus at the University of Zurich, told Times Higher Education, contrasting those who find nudges toward supervision unbearable with peers who are “probably happy about learning more and gaining some more people skills.”

Leysinger accepted that separating those who cannot and will not learn to supervise would be difficult. The LERU paper says “neglect or violation of good supervision practice requires suitable repercussions,” possibly including temporary loss of the right to supervise, intensified training requirements or loss of funding.

The overarching plea of the paper is for “an improved institutional culture of appreciation” for doctoral training. Other recommendations include:

• Mandatory supervision training, with professors expected to refresh their learning throughout their careers and with coaching for specific scenarios, such as when a relationship breaks down.
• Making supervision part of performance indices, with potential metrics including awards won by supervisees, the percentage of students pursuing “ambitious careers in academia and beyond,” and the number of supervisees launching spin-offs.
• Limiting the number of supervisees that an academic can take on, and the number of supervisors that can be involved in a dissertation.

The LERU paper describes expectation management as being a pivotal part of doctoral training, particularly when academics are recruiting students and agreeing on a thesis topic, because mismatches “will most likely bounce back throughout the course of the project.” The authors endorse the use of supervision agreements that set out obligations on the part of both the supervisor and the supervisee, which have been widely adopted in Germany in particular.

The authors say universities should survey doctoral students about their satisfaction with supervision not only while they are studying but also during their early and middle career stages, “as constructive criticism will grow further over time and in retrospect and may also be reflected in ongoing collaborations between supervisors and their former doctoral researchers.”

“Developing and regularly checking on key performance indicators of employability, career development, and societal impact of former doctoral researchers over a significant period of time would help capture robust results of good supervision practice for further analysis and quality management measures,” the paper says.

Leysinger said the number of staff directly involved in doctoral education and the professionalization of their role have both risen over the past 25 years, a theme the paper summarizes as “it takes a village to raise a Ph.D.,” paraphrasing an African proverb.

While supervision has already gained some prominence in hiring in research evaluation, it was time to look at it “in a qualitative way,” Leysinger said. “What do you believe in? What are your tenets of good supervision? Often, we have to write teaching statements; I think we should also write supervision statements—what we believe is good supervision.”

Europe’s premier university group has outlined a blueprint to drive up doctoral supervision standards across the continent, but the group has also acknowledged that some academics might be beyond help.

In a paper published in February, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) says that researchers should have mandatory training in Ph.D. supervision and that the success of those they supervise should be a key factor in appraisals.

But authors Helke Hillebrand and Claudine Leysinger also acknowledge that it might be worth considering “establishing ‘single contributor’ research careers where talented researchers without sufficient people skills can pursue their research goals without being compelled to supervise junior colleagues.”

“Certain people are really extremely introverted, and I believe it’s almost forcing them into something that they’re not happy about doing,” Leysinger, head of the graduate campus at the University of Zurich, told Times Higher Education, contrasting those who find nudges toward supervision unbearable with peers who are “probably happy about learning more and gaining some more people skills.”

Leysinger accepted that separating those who cannot and will not learn to supervise would be difficult. The LERU paper says “neglect or violation of good supervision practice requires suitable repercussions,” possibly including temporary loss of the right to supervise, intensified training requirements or loss of funding.

The overarching plea of the paper is for “an improved institutional culture of appreciation” for doctoral training. Other recommendations include:

• Mandatory supervision training, with professors expected to refresh their learning throughout their careers and with coaching for specific scenarios, such as when a relationship breaks down.
• Making supervision part of performance indices, with potential metrics including awards won by supervisees, the percentage of students pursuing “ambitious careers in academia and beyond,” and the number of supervisees launching spin-offs.
• Limiting the number of supervisees that an academic can take on, and the number of supervisors that can be involved in a dissertation.

The LERU paper describes expectation management as being a pivotal part of doctoral training, particularly when academics are recruiting students and agreeing on a thesis topic, because mismatches “will most likely bounce back throughout the course of the project.” The authors endorse the use of supervision agreements that set out obligations on the part of both the supervisor and the supervisee, which have been widely adopted in Germany in particular.

The authors say universities should survey doctoral students about their satisfaction with supervision not only while they are studying but also during their early and middle career stages, “as constructive criticism will grow further over time and in retrospect and may also be reflected in ongoing collaborations between supervisors and their former doctoral researchers.”

“Developing and regularly checking on key performance indicators of employability, career development, and societal impact of former doctoral researchers over a significant period of time would help capture robust results of good supervision practice for further analysis and quality management measures,” the paper says.

Leysinger said the number of staff directly involved in doctoral education and the professionalization of their role have both risen over the past 25 years, a theme the paper summarizes as “it takes a village to raise a Ph.D.,” paraphrasing an African proverb.

While supervision has already gained some prominence in hiring in research evaluation, it was time to look at it “in a qualitative way,” Leysinger said. “What do you believe in? What are your tenets of good supervision? Often, we have to write teaching statements; I think we should also write supervision statements—what we believe is good supervision.”

Campaigners want to stop Spanish universities from obtaining the right to take positions on nonacademic issues guaranteed by law, which they claim will muzzle minority views.

Tensions between individual and institutional politics are particularly pronounced in Catalonia, where university statements supporting pro-independence leaders have attracted legal penalties. In 2020, Spain’s Supreme Court ordered the University of Barcelona to publicly denounce its statement of support, which six other universities had also backed.

The campaigners who brought that case, Academia for Coexistence, have sent an open letter to Spanish senators asking them to scrap an article in Spain’s long-debated higher education reform law, which has passed the lower house of Parliament and is pending approval by the upper chamber.

A line from the draft law on universities’ staff assemblies would legally guarantee them a role in “analyzing, debating and taking positions on issues of special social, cultural, legal, economic or political importance,” opening the door to more pro-independence declarations, critics claim.

“‘Catholicism is the true religion’—we don’t think this should be expressed by the university; if we say only women are sexually attractive, this is not something which is objective, it’s an opinion; if we say whatever football club is the best in the world, this should not be the opinion of a public institution,” said Juan Carlos Aguado, a professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). “If a university expresses opinions like that, the people who don’t share them are going to feel excluded.”

University staff assemblies in Spain are supervisory bodies, with members elected from different faculties, although not necessarily in proportion to their size. When not rubber-stamping annual spending, Aguado said, UPC’s assembly used to take symbolic votes on international human rights issues, but since 2000 it has become increasingly involved in domestic politics, such as by endorsing Catalan declarations on self-determination. The 2017 Catalan independence referendum, which was ruled unconstitutional by national courts, further heightened tensions.

The January open letter by Academia for Coexistence had gathered almost 1,300 signatures from academics across Spain and beyond at the time of writing. Despite court cases and other organized opposition, some Catalan university rectorates want the draft law to pass in its current form.

“Individuals retain the right to express their concerns. If the government or the assembly of a university express their opinion, it in no way invalidates or erases the right of individuals to express their opinion,” said Pablo Pareja Alcaraz, vice rector for faculty and community relations at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

“I don’t see this as a trade-off or a conflict; I see it as completely complementary,” he said, adding that it was “a little utopian” to ask universities to remain totally detached from politics. “It’s up to each of the communities to decide what topics affect the university as a whole and which are outside their primary interests. As long as universities exercise this right responsibly, no one should be scared or concerned.”

A spokesman for the University of Barcelona’s rector said that universities were “entitled to the fundamental duty of impartiality.”

“According to some views, this implies the inability to express any thoughts or statements on issues that might raise debate in the public sphere,” he said, adding that the administration instead interpreted impartiality as meaning “universities cannot treat their members differently depending on arbitrary factors,” including political positions.

“We agree with the fundamental relevance of the principle of neutrality that applies to universities as public institutions. Still, we do not consider that this neutrality implies the inability to analyze, debate and position those issues of special importance for society,” he added.

Campaigners want to stop Spanish universities from obtaining the right to take positions on nonacademic issues guaranteed by law, which they claim will muzzle minority views.

Tensions between individual and institutional politics are particularly pronounced in Catalonia, where university statements supporting pro-independence leaders have attracted legal penalties. In 2020, Spain’s Supreme Court ordered the University of Barcelona to publicly denounce its statement of support, which six other universities had also backed.

The campaigners who brought that case, Academia for Coexistence, have sent an open letter to Spanish senators asking them to scrap an article in Spain’s long-debated higher education reform law, which has passed the lower house of Parliament and is pending approval by the upper chamber.

A line from the draft law on universities’ staff assemblies would legally guarantee them a role in “analyzing, debating and taking positions on issues of special social, cultural, legal, economic or political importance,” opening the door to more pro-independence declarations, critics claim.

“‘Catholicism is the true religion’—we don’t think this should be expressed by the university; if we say only women are sexually attractive, this is not something which is objective, it’s an opinion; if we say whatever football club is the best in the world, this should not be the opinion of a public institution,” said Juan Carlos Aguado, a professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). “If a university expresses opinions like that, the people who don’t share them are going to feel excluded.”

University staff assemblies in Spain are supervisory bodies, with members elected from different faculties, although not necessarily in proportion to their size. When not rubber-stamping annual spending, Aguado said, UPC’s assembly used to take symbolic votes on international human rights issues, but since 2000 it has become increasingly involved in domestic politics, such as by endorsing Catalan declarations on self-determination. The 2017 Catalan independence referendum, which was ruled unconstitutional by national courts, further heightened tensions.

The January open letter by Academia for Coexistence had gathered almost 1,300 signatures from academics across Spain and beyond at the time of writing. Despite court cases and other organized opposition, some Catalan university rectorates want the draft law to pass in its current form.

“Individuals retain the right to express their concerns. If the government or the assembly of a university express their opinion, it in no way invalidates or erases the right of individuals to express their opinion,” said Pablo Pareja Alcaraz, vice rector for faculty and community relations at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

“I don’t see this as a trade-off or a conflict; I see it as completely complementary,” he said, adding that it was “a little utopian” to ask universities to remain totally detached from politics. “It’s up to each of the communities to decide what topics affect the university as a whole and which are outside their primary interests. As long as universities exercise this right responsibly, no one should be scared or concerned.”

A spokesman for the University of Barcelona’s rector said that universities were “entitled to the fundamental duty of impartiality.”

“According to some views, this implies the inability to express any thoughts or statements on issues that might raise debate in the public sphere,” he said, adding that the administration instead interpreted impartiality as meaning “universities cannot treat their members differently depending on arbitrary factors,” including political positions.

“We agree with the fundamental relevance of the principle of neutrality that applies to universities as public institutions. Still, we do not consider that this neutrality implies the inability to analyze, debate and position those issues of special importance for society,” he added.