Between public service and market: Portraying the bifront university in a platformized world

Abstract This paper contributes to the international debate on the changes affecting recruitment and orientation processes toward higher education. Based on qualitative research involving 19 Italian public universities, the study analyses the transformations in communication, recruitment and orientation activities within platformization and increasing institutional competition. Drawing on Bourdieusian conceptual categories, the analysis highlights how platformization and the changes triggered by the COVID‐19 pandemic have opened new opportunities, which universities have interpreted and leveraged in diverse ways according to the evolving nature of the Italian university field as a space of material and symbolic differences. The primary outcome of these transformations is the reinforcement and crystallization of preexisting social and territorial inequalities, which is a historical characteristic of the Italian university system.