The Meloni government cuts i Funds for universities. With the ongoing academic year, many universities are already experiencing a large investment deficit due to the FFO cuts, the main source of financing of state universities. In particular, for Sicily, those of Catania, Messina and Palermo is a cut of about 35 million euroswhich add up to the previous cuts and aggravate the structural conditions of Sicilian universities.
In total, in the years of the Meloni government, cuts have been added and failure to assign new funds for a total of 518 million euros. The effect was, immediately, very impactful on research, intake and reduction of the training offer.
Chronic subfinification of Italian universities
Still cuts in the ordinary funding fund (FFO) for state universities. In 2024 there was a cut of 178 million eurosto which was added the failure to assign another 340 million of the extraordinary “mass” plan. Overall to state universities to date are missing 518 million euroswith all the consequences of the case.
Among these, the freezing of service sockets throughout 2025, the suspension of recruitment procedures, the revision of the three -year programming, the Tagging of research fundsthe reduction of the training offer and the multiplication of free teaching.
2025 is, however, in the name of an increase of +3.73% compared to 2024 and this figure is proudly reported by Minister Bernini. The problem is that this increase barely covers the expense expected for the extraordinary plan, but does not compensate for the cut of 178 million euros less.
As reported by the FLC CGIL of Naples, the state universities in the two years had to cut the expenses of over 1 billion euros (6% of their revenue), net of inflation.
Tall cuts in the South: the university crisis
Of the conditions of the Sicilian universities we learn, specifically, thanks to the deepening of Miriam Sommarino For Sicily generation. According to Sommarino, the cut must be framed in a general context of disadvantage and southern underdevelopment. Conditions that, without adequate investment, push young people to a forced migration process.
Ffo cuts have negative effects on many aspects, in particular:
- on the quality of teaching and training offer;
- on the update and recruitment of the teachers;
- on the financing of the research;
- on the hiring of staff.
“In the long term – Sommarino still writes – the very existence of the Sicilian universities itself is at risk”.
The consequences of the national strategic plan for internal areas
They are all aspects that, to date, add up to National strategic plan of the internal areas. It is a document that some define as “dystopian”, because it explicitly tells the desire to accompany the rural areas, mountains and small municipalities in a “path of chronic decline and aging”.
The cut to the universities particularly affects the South and the young forced to migrate to study will contribute even more to the depopulation, accelerating a phenomenon already seen as irreversible. A phenomenon that, as stated in the plan, the government wants to “accompany”:
These areas cannot be the objective of reversal of trend but cannot even be abandoned to themselves. They need a targeted plan that can assist them in a path of chronic decline and aging in order to make it socially dignified for those who still live there.
Is the crisis served? According to several commentators, it is a “war between poor to grab the few resources”, thus justifying the abandonment and consequent decline of the internal areas of the South. All this happens, it is underlined, in spite of theArticle 3 of the Constitutionwhich guarantees equal social dignity without territorial distinctions.
