Working Paper Cnr-Ceris, N° 03/2014

Italy’s New Requirements for Academic Careers: The New Habilitation and its Worthiness

Giulio Marini

 Cipes, Centro de Investigação de Políticas do Ensino Superior, Universidade do Porto

Rua Primeiro de Dezembro, 399 Matosinhos, 4450-227, Portugal

 CNR-CERIS  National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Economic Research on Firm and Growth

Via dei Taurini 19, Roma, Italy

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Abstract: The new habilitation, established in Italy in 2010 and commenced in 2012, was designed (outcomes released commencing December 2013). Its aim is to filter who will be eligible to apply for competitions for the two permanent level professor positions in the universities. The results of the first set of data are 20 scientific sectors representing more than 10% of all sectors analyzed to understand if the outcomes reflected in a worthy way the indicators of productivity and quality of scientific production of candidates. Some legal and statistical framework are fostered before the data analysis in order to have a better understanding of the reform and the context where it operates. The hypothesis of the worthiness is here addressed on the assumption that the current position held by a candidate should not play any role in the attainment of the habilitation. Splitting candidates into two roles and having controlled for age as a variable, the data was used to reveal that the indicators of quality of scientific production (H index for hard sciences and articles in top ranked journals for social sciences and humanities) are more frequently the best predictors. Though some limits of the present analysis are faced and illustrated, some critical points of this new institution are discussed.

Keywords:  habilitation, academic career, scientific productivity, rigged competitions, epistemic communities