Italian doctorate holders in the political and social sciences: career options, job growth and salary

In this paper, we develop a secondary analysis of the data provided by the Italian National Statistical Institute (Istat) by means of two surveys on large samples of PhD graduates who obtained their doctoral degrees from Italian universities in 2004 and 2006 (the first survey) and in 2008 and 2010 (the second survey). We focused on doctorate holders in the political and social sciences. After a descriptive social make-up of the four cohorts, we carried out an analysis to verify the mid-term occupational outcomes of PhD graduates in the political and social sciences during a period of academic reforms and economic crisis in Italy. Our analysis underlines relevant differences between the two cohorts of PhD holders that graduated before the economic crisis and the two cohorts that graduated after. On the one hand, the latter have higher chances of obtaining fixed-term contracts and get low salaries; on the other hand, PhDs who graduated in 2008 and 2010 more frequently experience the chance/risk of self-employed or non- academic researchers at all. The economic crisis fragmented the terms of contracts, in particular, increasing fixed-term contracts and unemployment and furthermore, polarizing salaries (very high salary or very low salary). Further studies are necessary to understand whether this new condition is a constraint or an opportunity for PhDs in the political and social sciences.