Between academia and labour market—the occupational outcomes of PhD graduates in a period of academic reforms and economic crisis

The article examines the mid-term occupational outcomes of two cohorts of PhDs graduated in 2004 and 2008 in Italy. This comparison allows the authors to explore changing PhD’s occupational prospects after recent academic reforms (e.g. cuts to public funding, introduction of fixed-term positions for assistant professors) and the economic crisis. Popula- tion data from the ‘Istat Survey on the Occupational Outcomes of PhD graduates’ is used to analyse PhD’s employability, international mobility, type of contract and occupation 5 years after obtaining a doctoral degree. Empirical results show that academic reforms and the economic crisis coincided with decreasing employment in academia and increasing chances of having a fixed-term contract, being employed abroad and working in research-related occupations outside academia. Moreover, PhD graduates from hard disciplines, such as engineering, are generally better off compared to PhD graduates in soft fields, such as sociology. Finally, the results suggest that the academic reforms reduced the chances to work in academia more in soft rather than in hard academic disciplines.