Over-education and Ph.D Graduates in Italy during the Great Recession (original) (raw)

Over-education and Italian Ph.D Graduates during the Great Recession

2018

This paper evaluates the impact of the Great Recession on Ph.D over-education using data drawn from four annual cohorts of Ph.D graduates surveyed by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. Over-education is examined through the definitions of both overskilling and over-qualification. To assess the effect of the crisis, we adopt several proxies, among which economic resilience. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the nexus over-education-resilience receives attention. The results show that over-skilling is negatively associated with the Great Recession. More generally, working on research-based activities and having study experience abroad are always significant drivers to overcome any kind of job mismatch. Conversely, being self-employed increases the risk of over-education, casting some doubts on the satisfactory additionality of Ph.D employment trajectories beyond academia and research. Finally, in contrast with previous results for graduates, we find ...

Great Recession and over-education among high skilled . The case of Italian Ph . D graduates

2016

This paper evaluates the impact of the Great Recession on over-education among Italian Ph.D graduates drawn from the four cohorts 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010 surveyed by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. Originally, regional resilience (Martin, 2012) is adopted, among other proxies, to assess the effect of the crisis. The paper also adds empirical evidence on the main determinants of over-education among the highest skilled workers as the literature has mainly focused on graduated. Over-education is examined through the definitions of over-skilling and over-qualification. The results show that economic crisis dampens the optimal skill job matching in early phd holders’ careers; the evidence is less robust when over-qualification is examined. The impact is attenuated if the Ph.D holder works in more economic resilient areas and hold R&D based activities. Additionally, it emerges that sociodemographic variables do not exert a relevant influence on over-education. Conversely, jo...

Italian Ph.D. holders and mismatch in education and skills

Advances in Methodology and Statistics, 2017

Ph.D. education is a key element in innovation and the generation of new knowledge. Nevertheless, in Italy, the share of doctoral graduates is still lower than the average for OECD member countries. This paper investigates the effectiveness of doctoral education and the extent to which the Italian labour market properly absorbs the rising flow of Ph.D. holders. The effectiveness is assessed from the twofold perspective of the formal relevance of a Ph.D. qualification in the labour market and the substantial applicability of skills acquired to different occupations inside and outside university. Logit models enable sketches of the main determinants of overeducation and overskilling among Italian Ph.D.'s, whereas log-earnings equations allow assessment of the role of educational and skills mismatches in terms of wage penalties. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions help analyse some causes of these mismatches. The different patterns of overeducation and overskilling among Ph.D. holders wo...

Is There Still A Chance Of Finding A Stable Job? Evidence From A University In Southern Italy

Working Papers, 2010

Differing characteristics in the labour market and educational system may lead to different outcomes both in terms of the speed of finding a job and of the job's stability. We investigate whether having occupational specific human capital, as measured by the field of study, is associated with a higher probability of finding a stable job in a labour market which is flexible as regards atypical jobs but highly protective regarding stable jobs. We apply a discrete-time hazard model, taking into account unobservable heterogeneity, to analyse the transition to a stable job of students who graduated from the University of Calabria in 2004, at one, three and five years distance. Main findings indicate that, after controlling for a wide range of characteristics, Economics and Business graduates have a lower probability of finding a stable job than graduates in Engineering, followed by those with a degree in Sciences, Political Science, and Humanities. These results confirm that, even in a deprived area, investing in occupational specific human capital can be seen as an "insurance" against the risk of unemployment or unstable jobs.

The Scarring Effects of Recessions : Over-education and Macroeconomic Conditions at Graduation

2015

This paper measures the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the education mismatch of workers in Germany. State-level unemployment rates from 1994-2012 are used as a measure of economic conditions and mismatch is quantified in terms of overeducation by both industry and occupation. Unfavorable economic conditions at the time of graduation significantly increase the probability that workers are overeducated in future jobs. IV estimates which account for potential endogeneity in graduation timing show that a single percentage point increase in state-level unemployment causes an increase in the probability of overeducation between 1.5 and 1.8% for university graduates. Impacts for graduates of more technical tertiary education programs and apprenticeships are much smaller. Labour market entry conditions appear to affect workers up to 18 years after graduation.

University pathways and graduate labour market outcomes in Italy: What Matters Where?

Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 2010

The first aim of this paper is to test whether graduates' qualifying elements (GQE), work experience during university and academic performance, are associated with better labour market outcomes. The second aim is to test whether these associations vary across fields of study, linked to different occupational contexts. We observe that different GQE protect from different risks: previous jobs reduce the unemployment and unstable job rates, while higher final marks reduce the risk of being overeducated. Graduates from the humanistic field of study experience lower trade-offs between working during university and academic performance; at the same time, they gain more occupational stability from previous work during university, but also greater risk of entrapment in the condition of being overeducated. These are relevant differences to the changing Italian context; considering the increasing rate of humanistic graduates and of unstable job positions, the detected differences among fields of study could change the graduate labour market transition.

The Impact of Economic Crisis on Graduates' Employment and Work

This article examines the employment and work status of Catalan graduates from public universities, by establishing a comparison between three cohorts of graduates: 2004 (during an expansion), 2007 (starting point of economic crisis), and 2010 (during the crisis). A fi rst descriptive analysis shows that the rise of unemployment has affected graduates differently according to gender, social origin, fi eld of study and work during higher education. A second typologi-cal analysis shows a homogeneous structure of occupations among the cohorts. However, starting with the 2010 cohort, the most exposed to the crisis, the absolute number of graduates with the better occupational conditions has declined, whereas the number of graduates in less protected has increased.

Overeducation and overskill in the Italian labour market: the role of fields of study

2016

This paper investigates the role of skill heterogeneity in affecting differences in occupational mismatch across fields of study. By relying on measures of overeducation and overskill collected in the 2014 ISFOL survey, we test to which extent the two phenomena differ across fields of study and the role played by merit and non-cognitive skills. We find that having an excellent graduate curriculum significantly decreases over-education and over-skill, while non-cognitive skills do not matter.

Determinants and wage effects of overeducation in Italy

SINAPPSI, 2022

This paper aims to study dimentions of educational mismatch and quantify its effects on wages. Using the Inapp-PLUS survey, we measure both overeducation/skilling and undereducation/skilling in Italy, providing five different measures of the educational mismatch: three of subjective type and two of objective type. They are also synthesized in a single indicator, able to give a measure of the degree of severity of overeducation. These measures are provided both for university graduates and for upper secondary school graduates. Results highlight that the condition of overeducation is typical of males, younger workers, people coming from lower-income families, informal channels of recruitment and with a humanistic educational background. Il contributo analizza le dimensioni del disallineamento istruzione-lavoro e stima l'effetto sui salari. Utilizzando l'indagine Inapp-PLUS, misuriamo sia la sovra-educazione che il sotto-inquadramento in Italia, fornendo cinque diverse misure del disallineamento educativo: tre di tipo soggettivo e due di tipo oggettivo. Da questi si ricava un indicatore sintetico che misura l'intensità della sovra-istruzione. Queste misure sono stimate sia per i laureati che per i diplomati della scuola secondaria superiore. I risultati evidenziano che la condizione di sovra-istruzione è tipica degli uomini, dei lavoratori più giovani, delle persone provenienti da famiglie a basso reddito, che hanno usato canali informali di reclutamento e con un percorso scolastico umanistico.