Università della Calabria

Università della Calabria (Unical) is a public university in Rende, in the Italian province of Cosenza. The university was founded in 1972 and, according to Times Higher Education, it had the first residential campus in Italy, a country where university towns are the norm. The University offers studies in the areas of engineering, economics, political and social sciences, humanities, education, sciences, pharmacy, and nutritional and health sciences. In 2020, it had more than 30 thousand registered students. The university was ranked 801th-1000th by QS World University Rankings 2021, which reported over 24 thousand FTE students, of which 760 international, and nearly nine hundred FTE teaching staff. It was also ranked 601–800th by Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020. The University is located in the southern Italian region of Calabria, the poorest region in the country, known for its weak and marginal industrial structure and its heavy dependence on the state (25% of employment is in the public sector), which gives the university a relatively important status in the region. With a GDP per capita of only 60% of the EU average in 2019 according to Eurostat, the region qualifies by far as a less developed region of the EU (those under 75%), which offers the university preferential access to funding from the the EU's cohesion policy. The government of the People's Republic of China has also shown interest in the region as part of its foreign policy, and a number of Chinese universities have signed agreements with Università della Calabria. Wuhan University of Technology has also co-opted a prominent academic at Unical for the promotion of educational and scientific co-operation and exchange, and sent humanitarian aid to this university as a token of friendship at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.