Assessing quality in Italian Universities: a multilevel latent profile approach.

In the last two decades an increasing attention is given to the measurement of university quality in Italy. Focusing on bachelor degree programs supplied by the Italian Universities in 2014/2015, in this work we aim to assess their performances with respect to key aspects (e.g. efficiency, effectiveness, attractiveness, satisfaction, etc), yearly monitored by university ruling bodies and the Ministry of Education, to assess the state of the system with respect to multiple dimensions of quality and programming corrective actions. A Multilevel Latent Profile approach has been applied to classify degree programs which share similar features in latent classes by explicitly considering the hierarchy of the data structure (i.e. degree programs clustered in universities).