Foreign Students and University. A Case Study

The proposed work focuses on the analysis of the academic career of foreign students in Italy. In fact, as evidenced in the last report published by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) in March 2018, it emerges that the proportion of students with non-Italian citizenship who continue their studies at university remains still substantial even if this percentage is higher for the autochthonous (33.9% versus 51.1%). For this reason, it was decided to conduct a descriptive-exploratory analysis concerning the study of the profiles and study paths of the students who are enrolled in the academic year 2017/2018 for both bachelor and master's degree provided in the educational offer of the Department of Communication and Social Research at Sapienza University of Rome. More in detail, with reference to this case study, we're going to analyze individual characteristics (gender and age at the time of enrolment), the high school experience (through the variables concerning the final mark and the type of high school diploma) and, finally, the productivity and the university performance of each student measured in terms of marks in exams and ECTS credits.