Is Entering Italian Academia Getting Harder?

Abstract

AbstractWhile a PhD degree is often considered the first necessary step to an academic career, since 2010 only a small fraction (less than 10%) of doctoral graduates obtained a position in academia within six years of the award of their degree. While we do not have information on their labour market outcomes, we can examine the determinants of this transition in order to study whether entry to an academic job is becoming more difficult. We merge three national administrative data archives covering completed doctoral degrees, postdoc collaborations and new hirings to academia (mostly assistant professor level). We find a decline in appointment probability after 2010, due to the hiring freeze imposed by fiscal austerity. We find, also, that a PhD degree and postdoc experience have a positive effect on the probability of obtaining a position in academia, while being a woman or being a foreign-born candidate has a negative effect. We found no evidence of career disadvantages for candidates from Southern universities.