Soon we will even live to be 120 years old, but in the meantime university students are inexorably declining.
Human life gets longer and this is considered by all to be a good thing. But in some countries, including Italy (and especially Japan) this phenomenon adds up to a steady decline in the fertility rate, which has long remained below replacement level. Therefore the balance between births and deaths is negative and the population, net of immigration, tends to decrease. One of the consequences, little evaluated so far, is that the classrooms of Italian universities tend to empty and universities to become deserted. Becoming, between now and 2030, at risk of closure. Let's see what it's about.
The title of the famous film by the Coen brothers, It's no country for old men, is clearly not suitable for describing the reality of Italy. The over-65s are now over 14 million and, within a generation, they will be 20 million. And, in this regard, there is now talk of an "economy of longevity". Among those millions of "super-adults" we now have over 700,000 over 90, 14,000 centenarians and 1,500 people aged 105. The super centenarians, aged 110, on the other hand do not exceed 12.
Someone considers it an insurmountable limit, even if there are those who maintain that the 120-year milestone is now around the corner. And it is to be believed, at least if we look at what is happening in Japan, that it even surpasses the Italian experience by many lengths. In the country, according to data released by the Ministry of Health on the occasion of the festivity that celebrates Respect for the Third Age, there is a constant rise in centenarians that, since the beginning of the statistics in 1963, when there were just 153 people over 100 years of age, there have been over 90,000 people over 100 years of age. 88.4% are women, almost 80,000, while men are in the clear minority, with a consistency of just over 10,000 units.
Advances in medical research have marked significant growth in recent decades, explains the ministry, with life expectancy in Japan being the highest in the world for both gender identities: 87.74 years for women and 81. 64 for men. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest person in the world at 118 is actually a Japanese woman. Fukuoka resident Kane Tanaka was born in 1903, the same year that the Wright brothers achieved the first airplane flight that could be controlled by the pilot. At 111, Nara resident Miziko Ueda is the oldest man in Japan.
One consequence not very well received by Japan's super-oldies is that of gold medal that until a few years ago was ceremoniously given to those who celebrated their 100th birthday. Today it is no longer done. It is one thing to give away 150 gold medals a year, it is quite another to deliver 100,000. albeit with regret, the Treasury has therefore informed the Japanese that if they want to live long they must now do so without that symbolic, but also economic, satisfaction represented by the little piece of gold.
Returning to Italy, while centenarians increase, twenty-year-olds decrease and the university suffers. In fact, as we read in the newspapers these days, the insidious demographic decline in Italy, if it does not experience a trend reversal that is neither seen nor hypothesized to date, will desertify the country's universities. The time frame to see fate come true is thirteen years, from now to 2040.
Talents Venture, a consulting firm specializing in university education, argues that the decline in births, added to the flows of students leaving their areas of residence in the South, risks "create real ghost universities, universities which, having remained in charge of the territories, could only be attended by those who work there“. This above all in the universities of the South, where the demographic decline threatens the entire university system. In Sardinia, Basilicata and Puglia, a reduction of the population is expected, by 2040, of respectively 34%, 33% and 32% compared to 2023.
In the southern regions, the progressive decrease in the population aged 18-21 will bring this cohort to 414,000 in 2040 (it was 703,000 in 2010).
Apparently, the fifteen educational sites present in the territories that will record the most severe demographic decline are all in the South. Six campuses had fewer than one hundred students enrolled in the first year already in the 2021-'22 academic year, the 18% of Italian degree courses had twenty enrolled or fewer. And the most critical situations have been detected in Basilicata, Sicily and Molise.
According to the Talents Venture study, universities that could see a reduction in "in-house" enrollments (without, of course, considering the "non-residents", who come from other provinces) are Enna, Foggia, Samnium is Frederick II of Naples, with the risk that demographic trends lead to a reduction between 15 and 24% by 2030.
The decline also threatens the universities of the Center and the North, which today attract students from the South. By 2040, fourteen of the fifteen Italian universities hosting more students from other regions could suffer losses in first year enrollments exceeding 20%. Among them, Bologna, Rome La Sapienza, Ferrara, PoliMilan, Catholic Milan, Perugia, Padua, Parma, PoliTorino is Trent. The University of La Sapienza, for example, could record reductions in off-site enrollments of the 6%, precisely due to the decrease in the population of 18-21 year olds which in recent years will concern Sicily, Puglia, Campania, Calabria and Basilicata.
Until 2030, almost all the regions of the Centre-North will still be able to see a slight increase in the population between 18 and 21 years of age, but in the following decade, provided there are no demographic inversions in the country, the decline will be felt in this macro-area with peaks in Valle d'Aosta (-27% of registrations compared to 2023), in the Marches (-25) and in Umbria (-24).
