Economics and Finance of the Italian University at Crisis Times

At Crisis Times Universities are forced to enlarge and diversify their stakeholders’ range. Resources are diminishing and the resource diversification is a must for both the European University and the Not-European One. Main stakeholders of universities are, first of all, students who are paying fees and any other client who is paying a service, from consultancy to location rentals, from research to asset management (Cummings, 2014; Leslie et al., 2012). Next to students and other clients, very important stakeholders of Universities are philanthropists. They can be both private and public grant-makers. First of all, they are often research partners who are interested in focused alliances and joint venturing. The university places itself among the most significant producers of advanced research, a presence reflected in publications, research grants, inventions, laboratories, national and international prizes. Research partners often mix the patron role with being client of the university research. Secondly, philanthropists can be pure patrons who provide wealthy bequests for the University, above all in order to support a public good and a strong community identity. The third category of philanthropists includes ex alumni too, who create clubs who are volunteering as for time, in-kind resources and money. From the sale of assets and other tangibles or financial, universities diversify their revenues also investing their assets (Cummings, 2014). Above all, these revenues can include Interest on savings and temporary cash investments; Dividends and interests from securities; Sales of Assets and Inventories; Other investment income. Next to marketing, fundraising and investing, they have both developed for more than two decades. This paper will focus on the Italian University and thanks to a cluster analysis of the latest performances, it will explain how the resource diversification is changing, while the Italian University is heavily affected by diminishing public resources.