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

We develop a secondary analysis of the data 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 (thesecondsurvey).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 these graduates 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. The latter have higher chances of obtaining fixed-term contracts and get low salaries; PhDs who graduated in 2008 and 2010 more frequently experience 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.