The University of Bologna is allocating €2.5 million of its own resources to support students who, although eligible according to the regional rankings for the right to education, did not receive a scholarship due to insufficient available funds.
This is an extraordinary measure addressing a situation that had not occurred in our Region for many years: students who are eligible for a scholarship but cannot receive it due to insufficient available funds. Although they meet the requirements set out in the annual ER.GO call issued by the Regional Agency for the Right to Higher Education, the resources available are not enough to cover all eligible applicants.
At the University of Bologna in particular, many of these students come from outside the region or from abroad and must bear considerable financial and personal costs in order to relocate for their studies. For them, therefore, the scholarship represents a fundamental form of support.
“Our decision is exceptional in response to a crisis that we hope will remain exceptional,” says the Rector of the University of Bologna, Professor Giovanni Molari. “It is a choice based on fairness that we have taken with the utmost responsibility, despite an unfavourable economic situation. I thank the Board of Governors for immediately supporting my proposal. I thank the Academic Senate, which in recent months had asked me to explore all possible solutions. I thank the Student Council, which has been constantly involved and has decided to allocate for this purpose the annual fund that the University provides to improve student services.”
ER.GO has always stood out among the best Italian agencies for the right to education and, even when many Regions reported a high number of eligible students without a scholarship, it has always managed to guarantee scholarships to all entitled students. Although the call clearly states that scholarships may not be awarded due to lack of funds, this possibility had long remained purely theoretical. This year, however, the situation has changed. Already last autumn it was announced, much earlier than in previous years, that the available resources would not be enough to fund all scholarships. In recent weeks this has been confirmed: a significant number of students will not receive the support they expected. All of them are first-year students, as the ER.GO call gives priority to those enrolled in subsequent years. This is the case despite the additional funding provided by the Region.
According to the most up-to-date data, at the University of Bologna this situation concerns about 930 students from across Italy and around the world, around 580 of whom are international students. The overall financial need amounts to approximately €5 million.
The University has been monitoring the situation for several months and has now decided to intervene. To obtain a reliable estimate of the scale of the issue, it was necessary to wait for the final enrolment data, which for international students stabilise only at the end of February. Now that the data have stabilised overall, the Rector – after consulting the Board of Governors, which unanimously expressed its support – is preparing to sign an emergency decree for €2.5 million.
This is the highest contribution among those made by universities in the Region that have committed their own funds. The University of Bologna will transfer the full amount of the contribution to ER.GO as soon as possible to ensure that the measure can take effect immediately.
In addition, the University has asked ER.GO to distribute these funds among all eligible students who did not receive a scholarship so that no one is excluded. A simple linear progression of the rankings would in fact result in the full payment of only some scholarships. With this approach, instead, all eligible students will receive financial support corresponding to approximately 50% of the scholarship they should have received from the Region.
These €2.5 million are in addition to the contribution that the University allocates to ER.GO each year to enable the payment of scholarships to all eligible students: more than €2 million over the last four years, amounting to between €500,000 and €600,000 per year.
In recent weeks, the University of Bologna has also reached out to foundations across the Multicampus territories, encouraging them to contribute through an extraordinary measure. Some encouraging responses have already been received, and further contributions are expected to add to the funds provided by the University.
Finally, there is hope that the regional funds set aside for students who enrolled after the end of the filter semester will, once the new rankings are finalised, help bring scholarship coverage as close as possible to 100%.
“It is now essential to urgently plan the right to education for the coming years in the appropriate institutional forums,” Rector Molari adds. "We have called for this from the very beginning and we do so again now: those who choose our University or the Emilia-Romagna Region must be given clear and realistic guarantees. It is also necessary for the Region and all universities to act in coordination, rather than through independent and ill-considered press announcements such as those seen in recent weeks. We have always stated that we would wait until February for an accurate estimate of the financial needs and that we would then intervene. That is exactly what we have done. In the coming months, I expect coordinated action that also encourages careful consideration of how students access degree programmes, which must meet the highest standards, and of the launch of new academic programmes, which must always take sustainability into account. Otherwise, individual decisions and short-term strategies risk undermining the entire system."
“In recent years,” the Rector continues, “the University of Bologna has made firm and sometimes difficult decisions on access policies. We were the first, and for a long time the only university, to oppose remote admission tests. We have also maintained in-person teaching and ensured that our academic offer remains sustainable in the long term. We could have made different choices which, given our strength and international reputation, would have brought higher enrolment numbers and greater financial returns. Instead, we chose and will continue to choose seriousness over convenience. And now, with this extraordinary effort to support scholarships, even though they are not directly our responsibility, we reaffirm our commitment to combining the highest quality education with the greatest possible inclusiveness.”
