ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES ACROSS TIME.A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFUSION OF ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THEIR DETERMINANTS.

The dissertation deals with the expansion of the endowment of higher education institutions in Italy and the driving forces behind this process. The focus has been mainly on macro level variables, observing how the aggregate number of universities and satellite universities evolved through time, since the unification of Italy to nowadays. The dissertation has been organized on the basis of two main objects of analysis: the first part deals with the increase of universities operating in the country, while the second part deals with the diffusion of satellite universities. For each of the two objects of analysis we had both a descriptive and analytic purpose: at first we concentrate on describing how the process of founding of new universities (and afterwards, their modern extension, satellite universities) developed through time. On a second stage the focus of attention moved to the analytic level: we investigate under which circumstances a new university or a new satellite university is opened. Which are the features at local and national level that more likely affect the rate of founding of a new university or a satellite campus? We developed a set of hypothesis that mainly refer to the three domains: a) institutional and organizational processes; b) economic factors; c) demand driven processes. With respect to the diffusion of universities, findings from our statistical models suggest that expansion of universities in the last thirty years has been mainly driven by factors that can be associated to the demand for higher education, with a distribution of universities mainly in highly populated areas and with good economic performances. As far as satellite universities are concerned, findings from our model suggest that again the phenomenon may be interpreted as demand-driven, but strongly associated with a tendency to implement imitative processes among peers. Referring to the notion of isomorphism and legitimacy developed by new institutional literature, imitative processes seem to work both between and within satellite universities. Once the new form of organization begins to be accepted and legitimated, a sort of race for following the new “fashion” spreads among universities. The same occurs among satellite universities that become autonomous universities: once become “adult” they tend to perpetuate the same scheme that gave them birth. The latter may be identified as a sort of intergenerational imitative process, that could be traced back -although in a variant version- to the case of mimetic isomorphism described in new institutional theory.