Was it worth it? An empirical analysis of over-education among Ph.D. recipients in Italy

This paper aims to provide an empirical examination of factors associated with overeducation among Ph.D. graduates in Italy. Our investigation is based on recently released data collected by the Italian National Institute of Statistics by means of interviews with a large sample of Ph.D. recipients, carried out a few years after they obtained their Ph.D. degree. We measured the mismatch between their current job and previous Ph.D. studies using two direct subjective evaluations of over-education, which distinguish between the usefulness of the Ph.D. title to get the current job position and to perform the current work activities. Even if the incidence of over-education varies according to the measurement applied, we found that it is highly widespread among Ph.D. recipients. Our econometric analyses are aimed at identifying factors associated with over-education and are based on the standard probit model and the bivariate probit model with sample selection which allows to control for self selection into employment. Our results show that over-education is significantly correlated with: i) a number of Ph-D. related variables, such as the scientific field of study, having attended courses or visiting periods abroad; ii) some job-related characteristics, such as working in the academia or being mainly involved in research related activities; iii) the channel of access to the job; iv) residential location. This paper contributes to the literature focusing on job-education mismatch by providing, to the best of our knowledge, the first empirical analysis of over-education among Ph.D. recipients in Italy; moreover, it provides some useful insights to evaluate the professional doctoral graduates in Italy.