Occupational Outcomes of Graduates: The Role Played by the Field of Study

Alessandra Petrucci , Università di Firenze
Valentina Tocchioni, Università di Firenze
Veronica Dorgali, University of Florence
Silvia Bacci, University of Florence
Bruno Bertaccini, University of Florence

With the expansion of upper secondary and tertiary education occurred since the second half of the twentieth century, the selectivity of higher education has diminished, and having a tertiary degree may no longer be sufficient to ensure access to the best occupational positions. Even more, in the last two decades, youth working conditions have worsened, and early occupational careers of recent graduates have experienced an increasing “flexibilization” made up by unemployment spells and temporary employment contracts. Nevertheless, graduates’ occupation downward trend has occurred to a different extent across disciplinary areas, penalizing graduates from the humanities and social sciences and guaranteeing better rewarded occupations for graduates in the ‘hard’ sciences. The aim of this work is to advance our understanding on graduates’ occupational returns according to their field of study in Italy. For our purposes, a rich and detailed longitudinal dataset will be construct integrating two administrative data sources relating to the academic and occupational outcomes of University of Florence’s graduates, respectively. Analysing data though event-history models, with our study we intend to shed light on graduates’ occupational returns in term of waiting times before having a stable position in the labour market, field-of-study mismatch and qualification mismatch.

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 Presented in Session P3. Poster Session Migration, Economics, Environment, Methods, History and Policy