Right to Education and Expectation of Profit in the NRRP Frame: A Balance is Possible?

The Italian tertiary education system faces a significant shortage of purpose-built student accommodations, exacerbating housing stress in university towns and perpetuating inequalities in education access. The National Resilience and Recovery Plan (NRRP) has attempted to address this issue through Reform 1.7, which seeks to create 60,000 new beds in student accommodations by 2026. However, the structure of the Reform and its initial results have raised doubts about its effectiveness. To clarify these doubts, the research proposes an evaluation model to assess the NRPP’s Reform capacity to ensure a fair distribution of benefits from investments in student housing across different geographical areas and between the public and private sectors. The model, structured in three phases, allows the determination of the optimal share of beds to be allocated at subsidized rates, which, when compared to the minimum value set by the reform, enables an assessment of the Reform's effectiveness. According to its application to different case studies, the evaluation model can reveal potential issues in the geographical distribution of benefits and the risk of favoring private sector profits over public benefits, thus offering insights for future investments in student housing.