On August 7, the Ministry of the University published the decree that distributes the ordinary financing fund, i.e. the money with which the state pays for the functioning of public universities. The accompanying statement summarizes the operation in three points: 9.415 billion euros, resources increasing compared to last year and no university receiving less than before, with La Sapienza in the lead at 555.1 million.
The text of the decree and the attached tables tell a more complex story. The resources actually distributed are 9,365,562,965 euros, because almost fifty million return to the state coffers before reaching the universities, and that figure is lower than that distributed in 2025. That no one loses resources, then, depends on a clause that sets the minimum variation to zero: 30 institutions out of 61 remain exactly at the levels of the previous year, and among these is Sapienza itself. The National Council of University Students, one of the four bodies consulted before the signing, expressed a contrary opinion.
How the 2026 FFO is divided and why there are three figures going around
The Ordinary Financing Fund is the salary of the state university system: it pays teachers, technical-administrative staff, bills, laboratories, doctoral scholarships. Every year a decree establishes how to divide it among the 61 universities and public institutes. This year the decree is n. 982 of 29 July, signed by Minister Anna Maria Bernini and registered at the Court of Auditors on 6 August.
The money is divided into three large containers:
- the first is the basic share: 4.673 billion, just over half of the total, and it is the part that simply keeps the machine running. Inside there are 2.58 billion distributed according to the standard cost per student, i.e. how much the Ministry estimates it costs to train a student in that university, and the rest largely follows historical allocations;
- the second container is the reward share: 2.54 billion, approximately 30% of the resources, distributed based on results;
- the third is the equalization intervention: 140 million, 1.5%, which should correct the imbalances in favor of underfunded universities.
The relationship between the three numbers is already a political choice: the part that rewards is worth eighteen times that which rebalances.
Then the restricted items remain: 859.4 million for extraordinary recruitment plans, 584 million for interventions for students (doctoral scholarships, no tax area, disability support), 366.8 million provided for by individual laws, of which 271 million for departments of excellence.
This is where it is worth stopping for a moment, because three different numbers appear in the decree and the press releases mention only one of them.
- the first is 9.415 billion. It is the allocation recorded in the budget, the theoretical total: the figure that ends up in the titles;
- the second is 9.365 billion. From that total the decree removes 49,348,985 euros, i.e. the savings that universities have achieved by hiring fewer staff than those who retired. By law, that money does not remain with the universities: it returns to the State. It is the decree itself that writes it, and this is the sum that is actually distributed. In 2025 the corresponding figure was slightly higher;
- the third is 8.324 billion and is in the attached tables, those that assign the money university by university. It is the sum of the four items – basic fee, bonus fee, equalization intervention and extraordinary plans – that each university is accredited and can plan. The missing billion does not disappear: they are the items that already have a decided destination, from doctoral scholarships to no tax areafrom departments of excellence to inter-university consortia, distributed with their own criteria and in some cases with subsequent decrees.
And it’s the third issue that says the most interesting thing. Those 8.324 billion compare with the 8.242 billion in 2025: 81.4 million more, +0.99%. The core of the financing grows while the overall fund declines. More than a contradiction, we can define it as a transfer: part of those 81 million comes from other boxes of the same fund, starting with interventions for students, which dropped from 614.4 to 584 million. It is the mechanism that the Student Council defines as an accounting reallocation: resources are moved but not increased.
The 30% premium rate and the first application of the VQR 2020-2024
The 2.54 billion of the reward share are divided as follows: 60% based on the results of the Research Quality Assessment, the major exercise with which Anvur measures the scientific production of universities; 20% on recruitment policies, i.e. on the quality of researchers hired or promoted; 20% on the three-year planning objectives.
It is the first time that the VQR 2020-2024 has been used, and it brings with it a new indicator, called IRAS 5, which measures the ability to win international competitive projects, also taking into account how much they are worth. It weighs 5% within 60%, therefore little in absolute terms, but it marks a direction: those who already have offices equipped to intercept European tenders are also rewarded on ordinary financing.
The corrective factor linked to the PNRR must be read in the same logic. The 20% of the reward linked to programming is multiplied by a coefficient between 1 and 1.07, calculated on the share of PNRR funds that each university has managed to report by the end of 2025. Those who have spent and documented better get more. In the tables, the lowest coefficient is 1.023 for the Orientale of Naples, the highest 1.070 for the Polytechnic of Turin: the effect exists but is limited, because it acts on a fifth of the reward share. The point raised by the students, however, is another, and more structural: the administrative ability to spend, which is distributed very unevenly across the territory, is being rewarded.
Finally, there is an item that the Ministry presents as the main innovation of the year: article 12, which finances strategic and innovative projects proposed by universities. The endowment is 3 million euros: 0.03% of the Fund.
The universities that receive the most: Sapienza, Bologna, Federico II
In absolute terms, the ranking is that of agency launches: La Sapienza 555.1 million, Bologna 464.1, Napoli Federico II 408.2, Padua 395.9, Turin 347.3.
It is a ranking that measures only one thing: the size of the universities. La Sapienza has 92,541 current students, Reggio Calabria has 4,418. To understand how the resources are really distributed, we divided the FFO assigned to each university by the number of students that the Ministry itself uses to calculate the standard cost. The result: a system average of 6,150 euros per student, and a completely different ranking.
In the lead are Basilicata (9,410 euros), Siena (8,983), Sassari (8,730), Sannio (8,235) and Teramo (8,224). At the bottom are Naples Parthenope (4,494), Bergamo (4,677), Roma Tre (4,699), Salento (5,214) and Urbino (5,223). The giants slip to mid-table or below: La Sapienza is 37th with 5,998 euros, Bologna 31st, Padua 34th, the Polytechnic of Turin and the University of Turin 47th and 48th respectively.
The geography that emerges is not what one would expect, and must be explained. The FFO does not only finance teaching: it also pays for research, for medical faculties connected to polyclinics, for the fixed costs that a university incurs regardless of whether it has three thousand students or ninety thousand. Small universities have a structurally higher cost per student because the incompressible expenses are spread over fewer students, and several southern universities at the top of the ranking are medical schools. It is therefore not proof that the South is advantaged: it is proof that the ranking by absolute value, the one that ends up in the headlines, says nothing about how the resources are distributed with respect to who uses them.
The contrary opinion of the students and the comments on the distribution model
Four organizations expressed their opinions on the decree. The Conference of Rectors (Crui) gave a fully favorable opinion, appreciating the balance between valorisation of merit and budget stability. The National University Council (Cun), the elective body representing teachers, researchers and staff, gave a favorable opinion, while declaring itself willing to open a reflection on the revision of the distribution model. Anvur, the agency that measures the quality of research, also expressed its opinion but the content was not made public either by the organization or by the ministry. The fourth is the National Council of University Students (Cnsu), and its opinion is contrary: the decree mentions it among those acquired, the ministerial statement does not report its content.
The reliefs are of three types:
- the first concerns the overall amount. It is the Cnsu that was the first to count the 49 million paid to the treasury, arriving at the conclusion that the 2026 allocation is lower than the 2025 one even before considering inflation. The Council also recalls that Italy invests 0.6% of GDP in university education, compared to a European average of 0.8% and 0.9% in Germany;
- the second concerns the balance between the quotas. According to the Council’s calculations, the bonus rate reaches 30.5%, above the 30% ceiling set by law, while the equalization stops at 1.48%, below the minimum of 1.5% set by the same law that establishes it. In both cases the decree writes “approximately”, and without the exact calculation basis the verification cannot be replicated: these remain the Council’s findings, not acquired data. The direction, however, is consistent with what can be read in the tables;
- the third concerns the students. The dedicated item drops by 30.4 million. Within that decline there is an item that simply has not been refinanced: the 30.4 million that in 2025 supported the services linked to the new access to medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses. The 105 and 165 million that compensate universities for the no tax area, the 13 million for students with disabilities and specific learning disorders, the 35 million for support services and anti-violence offices remain unchanged in nominal value. The Fund for doctoral scholarships stops at 201 million, with a clause that prevents universities from losing more than 4% compared to 2025.
Under all these points there is a fundamental objection: a system that distributes a quarter of resources based on past results tends to reward those who were already ahead, because universities do not start from the same conditions. The share that should correct this effect, the equalization, is worth 1.5%.
What happens now: the end of the PNRR and the turnover of researchers
2026 is the year in which the PNRR’s investments in the university end: additional doctorates, orientation, tutoring, research partnerships. The decree does not provide any mechanism to accompany the exit from those measures, and the ordinary channel does not grow to absorb them. The risk, reported by the Cnsu, is that the services activated with the extraordinary funds will shut down together with the funds.
In the same year another rule changed. The decree recalls the rule according to which from 2026 the hiring power for university researchers drops to 75% of the staff who left the previous year: for every four researchers who leave, three can be hired. It is the same reduction in turnover from which the 49 million paid to the treasury derives.
The overall picture is that of a fund that grows in nominal value and declines in real value, with a clause that guarantees half of the system not to lose anything but also not to gain anything. The next step is the budget law for 2027, where an increase of 38.7 million is already foreseen for the co-financing of fixed-term researchers. On everything else, the discussion on the distribution model – the one that the National University Council has said it is ready to open – has yet to begin.
