The University of Padua encourages various initiatives for receiving refugees, asylum seekers and persons in a refugee-like situation.
The Academic Senate has encouraged discussion about migration, rescuing and receiving people with migration backgrounds among students, professors and staff members. The aim is to restrict the issue within the principles of reasonableness and to promote the full respect of human rights, a core value of the University and the civil society alike.
The University of Padua provides staff with resources and support that ensures an inclusive work environment.
Enrollment to a degree programme
If you have applied for asylum/international protection in Italy and you possess a residence permit for asylum request, you can enrol conditionally to a degree programme (bachelor’s, master’s, single cycle).
To graduate, before the end of your studies, you must thus present a valid residence permit for asylum/subsidiary protection (or the formal recognition of refugee status by the Territorial Committee).
If you are a student with refugee status or under subsidiary protection recognised as such by the Italian Government, you can obtain the CIMEA Statement of Comparability free of charge.
In case of missing or partial documentation, students with refugee status can apply for the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees, a project of the Council of Europe.
The EQPR is not a formal recognition act: it summarises and presents available information on the applicant’s educational level, work experience and language proficiency also through a structured interview. It is a tool that helps the University to carry out the assessment of the qualification you obtained.
To access the service you must create an account on the EQPR IT Platform in order to proceed to the EQPR assessment.
Within the framework of the exhibition “Out of Place” organised together with the University of Padua which will be displayed in June and July 2025, Fondazione Imago Mundi has decided to donate €30,000 for students at risk who are recipients of the Students at Risk, Unipd 4 Myanmar or Unicore scholarships and who are currently enrolled at the University of Padua.
If you are a student with refugee status or under subsidiary protection recognised as such by the Italian Government, you are fully exempted from the annual full tuition fee. You only need to pay the stamp duty and the regional tax for the right to higher education.
To benefit from the waiver, you must contact the Student Service Office at benefici.studenti@unipd.it(and unipd.rescuefund@unipd.it) by the end of the current academic year by attaching a document proving your status.
The University of Padua supports various initiatives to welcome people with refugee status, asylum seekers and people fleeing their countries. For information see the dedicated page.
The University of Padua offers research Fellowships at the University of Padua for Scholars under international protection, asylum seeking or considered “at risk”.
The fellowship is jointly funded by the University and the Department or Centre that will welcome the Visiting Scholar, as well as guarantee access to facilities, libraries, equipment/laboratories, etc. necessary to the Scholars’ activities.
The Italian Ministry of Interior, together with the Conference of Italian University Rectors (CRUI), offers 100 scholarships to refugee students or with international protection.
The University of Padua offers 2 scholarships to support Burmese students finding themselves in a difficult situation following the worsening of the situation in Myanmar.
Amount of scholarship: fee-waiver + € 8,000 scholarship (gross amount). The only amount to be paid by beneficiary students for a.y. 2023/24 consists of an admission fee, corresponding to the regional tax and marca da bollo.
Duration: The Scholarship is granted for one (1) academic year.
For the academic year 2022/23, the University of Padua offered 22 scholarships to support Afghan students finding themselves in a dangerous situation following the worsening of the political situation in Afghanistan.
Amount of scholarship: fee-waiver + €12,000 scholarship (gross amount) per a.y. The only amount to be paid by beneficiary students for each year consists of an admission fee, corresponding to the regional tax and marca da bollo.
Duration: the scholarship has a maximum duration of:
2 continuous years for Master’s degree candidates;
3 continuous years for Bachelor’s and Single-Cycle degree candidates.
Scholars at Risk (SAR) is an international network of higher education institutions. Its main objective is to promote academic freedom and protect scholars who are risking their lives or whose jobs are at stake.
Arqus is one of the 17 thematic consortia selected by the European Commission under the European programme ‘European Universities’.
Under Action line 2, a whole team of experts is working on mapping and planning activities for refugees: 2.6 Enabling refugees: a shared policy for the academic recognition and admission process of refugees.
Schools and universities are fundamental stages and important opportunities for young refugees to seize in their social inclusion path. According to the UN Refugee Agency statistics (UNHCR), only 3% of the refugees worldwide have access to higher education while the global average accounts for 37%.
To meet these challenges, Italian universities have signed the Manifesto dell’Università Inclusiva (Manifesto for Inclusive Universities) promoted by UNHCR. The manifesto aims to facilitate access to higher education for refugees and promote social inclusion and active participation in academic life.
The Manifesto includes general and guiding principles to which the signatories have committed themselves. The universities involved are implementing and working on the range of activities and programmes for refugee students, e.g. services for information and tutoring, recognition of qualifications obtained abroad, scholarships and benefits, and university corridors as regular immigration channels for refugee students living in third countries.
This initiative is part of the Global compact on refugees. This document, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 2018, commits governments, civil society and universities to promoting support and integration pathways for refugees.
Following the decision by the Academic Senate on 12 November 2019, the University of Padua has responded to the UNHCR’s appeal by signing the Manifesto for Inclusive University (Manifesto dell’Università Inclusiva).
CIMEA, the Italian information center on academic recognition, pursuant to the Lisbon Recognition Convention, has activated the National Coordination for the Evaluation of Refugee Qualifications (CNVQR). This is an autonomous decision by CIMEA, in line with its institutional tasks and responsibility, following the increase in migration flows towards Italy and Europe that has resulted in more and more requests for recognition of refugee qualifications by Italian higher education institutions.
The CNVQR is an informal network of experts from the administrative sector within higher education institutions. It deals with recognition of qualifications and shares evaluation procedures, problem cases, sources of information and methodological practices to follow when evaluating qualifications held by refugees, even with little or no documentation.
Participating in CNVQR implies:
participation as an institution on a voluntary and self-financing basis;
involvement of the whole institution, on behalf of its legal representative;
appointment of one representative per institution;
CIMEA is responsible for coordination, through the implementation of tools to exchange information among experts and a specific email address to use for the purpose.
The University of Padua has joined CNVQR on 20 September 2017.
