The north-south divide in the Italian higher education system

TL;DR

This paper investigates the persistent north-south divide in Italy's higher education, revealing significant disparities in research performance between regions, unaffected by gender or rank, and discusses potential causes and policy solutions.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence of regional disparities in Italian higher education research performance and analyzes determinants of this gap.

Findings

Southern professors have lower research performance than northern counterparts.

The regional gap persists across gender and academic rank.

University-level disparities are even more pronounced.

Abstract

This work examines whether the macroeconomic divide between northern and southern Italy is also present at the level of higher education. The analysis confirms that the research performance in the sciences of the professors in the south is on average less than that of the professors in the north, and that this gap does not show noticeable variations at the level of gender or academic rank. For the universities, the gap is still greater. The study analyzes some possible determinants of the gap, and provides some policy recommendations for its reduction.