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This paper assesses labour market outcomes associated with the acquisition of different graduate competences in the Italian labour markets particularly focusing on 'soft skills' developed during HE programs. By using a classification of graduate jobs that distinguishes between different horizontal skills, namley managerial and communication skills, the paper conducts an empirical analysis of the benefits of being employed in such occupations having completed a degree program. These benefits are assessed across time, referring to the period following the crisis and to most recent available data. Results show that only 'communication' skills provide higher benefits than discipline-related skills. Moreover, the higher education system seems not to provide higher education graduates with distinctive 'managerial' competences compared to non-graduate workers suggesting that these types of social skills can be developed through alternative learning paths, such as work-based experience or other extra-curricular activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines a theoretical-based model with a data-driven approach to develop an Early Warning System that detects students who are more likely to dropout. The model uses innovative multilevel statistical and machine learning methods. The paper demonstrates the validity of the approach by applying it to administrative data from a leading Italian university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates employment outcomes for a large sample of Ph.D. students who were enrolled in a doctoral training program in Italy in the period 2008–14. The empirical analysis is based on survey data obtained from a questionnaire distributed to 23,500 individuals in 2016. In Italy, student enrolment in a Ph.D. involves a university-based selection process; most students then receive either government or private sector financial support covering their study period. We are interested in the influence of privately funded scholarships on subsequent success in obtaining a job in academia or in the business sector or choosing self-employment. We hypothesize that receipt of private funding will increase the probability that the student will go on to pursue a career in the private sector. We find that private sector funding/scholarships have a tangible effect on steering the students toward employment in the private sector only if during their study period they have an opportunity to collaborate with a company. If the aim is to promote employment of graduates by private firms, then our results suggest that private companies should seek to be more closely involved in university Ph.D. programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gelmini reform implemented in Italy in 2010 was designed to ensure greater efficiency and effectiveness within the higher education (HE) sector. The reform was implemented in a climate of general austerity, which caused severe cuts in public funds for the university system. This paper documents the unintended consequences of the reform in terms of a dramatic reduction in the number of job positions, career speed, and remunerations for academic staff – which we describe as the 3Ls, i.e. Less staff, Later careers, Lower salaries. While the loss of wages cumulated is approximately equal to the average mortgage value for buying a house, the cost savings of the government are negligible, especially when compared to the adverse effects generated by the austerity reform. The profound inequality in the application, at the expense of younger and qualified faculties, mostly women, may lead to a long-lasting and irreversible consequences such as a loss of qualification and competitiveness for the whole HE system, as shown by the increasing phenomenon of brain drain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper revisits the outbreak of Covid-19 in Italy and particularly in Lombardy region, the first and initially most severely affected area among western countries. First, we provide an overview of the impact of the pandemic in the country and in the region, mentioning the turning points and the main effects on the national and local economy. Second, we focus on the impact in the educational sector, by describing an overview of the university's activities and reporting the actions undertaken by our home university, Politecnico di Milano, a technological university located in Milan (Lombardy region). We report the activities during the three main stages of the pandemic: the reaction, the management of the emergency and the planning of the new normality. Finally, we provide considerations on the main elements emerging from our commentary, showing the prominent roles of governance and communication in ensuring continuity for students, support for faculty and the redesign of services for the administrative staff. A student-centric approach and a high engagement of the entire community are the main elements that brought together the organisation to face the emergency and plan for the future, where the digital and physical layers coexists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to discover whether the performance of university students has improved in the wake of the changes in higher education introduced by the Bologna Declaration of 1999 and the construction of the European Higher Education Area. A principal component analysis is used to construct a multi-dimensional performance variable called the LEArning Society-adapted Outcome Index. A quantile regression is then applied to ensure that the analysis does not focus solely on average figures, and the performance of students of various types is analyzed. Significant improvements are found in the acquisition of systemic and interpersonal skills and in student satisfaction but not in cognitive aspects. There are improvements in students of all types, but they are smaller among the best students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we estimate the effect of receiving financial aid for a cohort of students who enrolled at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in the year 2007/2008, through a propensity score matching approach. Using administrative data about these students for four years, the impact of the financial aid on several dimensions of academic performance was evaluated: formative credits obtained after one year, dropout probability in the first and second year, graduation in the legal duration of the course, and graduation after four years. Overall, a positive and statistically significant effect of the grant is found and this finding is stable across several robustness checks. Exploring the heterogeneity of this effect, it is demonstrated that the effect is higher for immigrants, Italians who moved from another region for studying, and students attending an engineering course. Evidence that unobservable factors (such as students’ own intrinsic academic motivation) account for an important part of the estimated impact of the financial aid is also found. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper combines a theoretical-based model with a data-driven approach to develop an Early Warning System that detects students who are more likely to dropout. The model uses innovative multilevel statistical and machine learning methods. The paper demonstrates the validity of the approach by applying it to administrative data from a leading Italian university.

Doctoral supervision has attracted significant attention from higher education bodies over the last 15 years, stimulated by shifts in educational and socio-political contexts including what supports the knowledge economy and the stakeholdership of students. This paper conceptualises work worlds through Heideggerian discourse and presents exploratory findings from interviews with workplace supervisors analysed within the framework of the SuperProfDoc research project. It then draws on these findings and the mentoring and coaching literature to contribute to integrating supervision practices between the academy and the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines individual and institutional characteristics which may influence the outcomes of university students’ careers. Withdrawals, course changes, delays and graduations of students enrolled in first-cycle degree courses in a large public university in Italy are examined. Individual longitudinal data from administrative archives were used, taking into account both the temporal dimension and the organisational and structural characteristics of the degree courses. Results indicate that the profile of a successful student is defined by both socio-demographic factors and pre-university educational experience. At course level, restricted access to courses, study fields and course size were important for students’ university careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that university strategic positioning is influenced by the organisational dimension, operationalised along the variables of organisational structure, identity and centrality. A comparative case study is presented including two English and two Italian universities and drawing on a set of sixty interviews with academic leaders, managers and administrators. The analysis of the trajectory of the four universities from 2004 to 2018 illustrates the articulation of the link between the three organisational variables and positioning and how this has changed over time. Finally, the paper outlines six propositions on the expected impact of the organisational structure, identity and centrality on positioning processes of universities.

This paper assesses labour market outcomes associated with the acquisition of different graduate competences in the Italian labour markets particularly focusing on 'soft skills' developed during HE programs. By using a classification of graduate jobs that distinguishes between different horizontal skills, namley managerial and communication skills, the paper conducts an empirical analysis of the benefits of being employed in such occupations having completed a degree program. These benefits are assessed across time, referring to the period following the crisis and to most recent available data. Results show that only 'communication' skills provide higher benefits than discipline-related skills. Moreover, the higher education system seems not to provide higher education graduates with distinctive 'managerial' competences compared to non-graduate workers suggesting that these types of social skills can be developed through alternative learning paths, such as work-based experience or other extra-curricular activities.

The paper tests longitudinally the hypothesis that educational subcultures in terms of which students interpret their role and their educational setting affect the probability of dropping out of higher education. A logistic regression model was performed to predict drop out at the beginning of the second academic year for the 823 freshmen of a three-year bachelor degree in psychology at an Italian university. The model uses both measures of students' educational subculture and incoming levels of knowledge and skills. The probability of dropping out was used as dependent variable. Results show that the probability of dropping out is significantly associated with students' educational subculture – but not with their incoming level of knowledge and skills. Our results suggest the need to recognize the meaning as a legitimate variable of research and of intervention in the field of educational success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to show the increased relevance of soft skills in a continuously changing environment. A research was carried out to examine and compare students' and employers' perceptions regarding the importance of soft skills in different European countries. Results show that 86% of respondents indicate an increased emphasis on soft skills over the last 5-10 years and that companies consider soft skills more important than students/graduates. Furthermore, major differences have also been identified in the ranking of the 20 soft skills listed in this paper, indicating different levels of priorities. This paper suggests that companies and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) need to work together not only to increase students' awareness of the importance of soft skills but also to guide them in taking individual responsibility to acquire and develop these essential skills in order to continuously adapt to the changing labour market and improve their employability.

This paper sheds light on the development of a peculiar organizational form in the Italian higher education system: satellite campuses. In comparison with other European countries, the Italian system shows peculiarities in terms of differentiation and power distribution among institutional actors. Building on the idea that the opening of a satellite campus might be the result of a convergence of interests among two actors (the academic oligarchy, that is, tenured faculty members, and local governments) at the expenses of a third (the state), the paper provides evidence about a statistically significant and robust association between the level of internal "academic crowding" at a university and the chances of opening one or more satellite campuses. This supports the hypothesis that the creation of satellite campuses may have been welcomed and favored by tenured professors for diverting internal competition for academic posts and preserving the distribution of power in the parent university.

Engagement in knowledge exchange (KE) with external actors has become widely accepted as an integral mission of universities. However, research and teaching performance remain more important for career progression, while engagement activities are more weakly institutionalized. This raises the question of why academics participate in knowledge exchange engagement activities. This paper examines to what extent academics perceive that they are rewarded directly for KE by their university and to what extent they perceive to benefit in terms of their performance in other missions (research and teaching). Furthermore, we examine how these perceptions are associated with actual engagement behavior. We use data from a sample of academics in seven European universities to examine whether direct and indirect benefits from engagement are linked to engagement in a broad range of KE activities. The results suggest that direct university rewards are associated with less engagement in KE activities, while perceived indirect benefits are associated with more engagement. These relationships are particularly strong in STEM fields.

This paper investigates employment outcomes for a large sample of Ph.D. students who were enrolled in a doctoral training program in Italy in the period 2008-14. The empirical analysis is based on survey data obtained from a questionnaire distributed to 23,500 individuals in 2016. In Italy, student enrolment in a Ph.D. involves a university-based selection process; most students then receive either government or private sector financial support covering their study period. We are interested in the influence of privately funded scholarships on subsequent success in obtaining a job in academia or in the business sector or choosing self-employment. We hypothesize that receipt of private funding will increase the probability that the student will go on to pursue a career in the private sector. We find that private sector funding/scholarships have a tangible effect on steering the students toward employment in the private sector only if during their study period they have an opportunity to collaborate with a company. If the aim is to promote employment of graduates by private firms, then our results suggest that private companies should seek to be more closely involved in university Ph.D. programs.

This paper focuses on a generational change taking place in the Polish academic profession: a change in behaviors and attitudes between two groups of academics. One was socialized to academia under the communist regime (1945-1989) and the other entered the profession in the post-1989 transition period. Academics of all age groups are beginning to learn how tough the competition for research funding is, but young academics ("academics under 40"), being the target of recent policy initiatives, need to learn faster. Current reforms present a clear preferred image for a new generation of Polish academics: highly motivated, embedded in international research networks, publishing mostly internationally, and heavily involved in the competition for academic recognition and research funding. In the long run, without such a radical approach, any international competition between young Polish academics (with a low research orientation and high teaching hours) and their young Western European colleagues (with a high research orientation and low teaching hours) seems inconceivable, as our data on the average academic productivity clearly demonstrate. The quantitative background of this paper comes from 3704 returned questionnaires and the qualitative background from 60 semi-structured in-depth interviews. The paper takes a European comparative approach and contrasts Poland with 10 Western European countries (using 17,211 returned questionnaires).

Both the managerial literature and policymakers have recently emphasized the potential role of university spin-offs (USOs) as drivers of regional development. Specifically, USOs may support regional development by exploiting the scientific knowledge developed by their parent universities into industrial innovations, thus spreading knowledge spillovers that can be in turn exploited by other local firms. In this paper, we analyse how the use of these spillovers at the regional level may depend on the USOs' capabilities to implement scientific knowledge into their innovation development as well as to align this knowledge to the needs of local organizations. We discuss how these capabilities may be more easily developed by USOs of generalist universities that focus their scientific effort on a broader range of scientific domains and tend to establish stronger relationships with local firms. To test our hypotheses, we analyse data on the patents filed by a large sample of German and Italian USOs. Our results confirm that both a larger use of scientific knowledge and a higher generality of the parent university increase the regional impact of the USOs' inventions. These findings may shed further light on the actual contribution of USOs to the regional development, by providing a better understanding of their role in the transfer of scientific knowledge from the parent universities to the other actors operating in the regional environment.

The present research identifies the drivers of the growth of academic spin-offs (ASOs). Empirical studies have found few successful cases of ASOs from a firm-level perspective; many companies fail, and others tend to remain small without making a meaningful contribution to local economic development. Consequently, analysing the factors affecting spin-off growth is important to understand their potential benefits for society. A large portion of studies focus on external drivers of ASO growth, while we concentrate on the internal dimension, analysing the effect of the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial teams on the performance of ASOs from a longitudinal perspective. Our paper investigates how ASO entrepreneurial team heterogeneity, both horizontal (cognitive) and vertical (status), and changes in entrepreneurial team heterogeneity between the prefoundation and postfoundation stages affect ASO performance. The results show that vertical heterogeneity in the composition of the prefoundation team is a driver of ASO performance over a shorter time horizon (one year) and more so if the average seniority of academics is low. Horizontal heterogeneity plays a negative moderating role. However, longer-term performance is more influenced by horizontal heterogeneity, implying slower growth after the spin-off foundation. These findings should provide important insights for both managers and Italian policy-makers.

To date, understanding and empirical investigation of the internationalisation processes of university spin-outs (USOs) have been limited. Few studies have explored the role of the specific characteristics of their core technology, in particular their innovativeness, as a determinant of their early internationalisation. This is also an issue which is under-explored within the general international business field. To address this gap, the purpose of our paper is to examine how the innovativeness of USOs influence the pace of their internationalisation. To achieve this, we explore how innovativeness is nurtured and cumulatively developed during born global (BG) and non-born global (NBG) USOs' pre-foundation technology development trajectory. BGs represent a category of young, usually, high-technology firms that internationalise within 3 years of inception. By exploring the pre-foundation technology development process of Italian USOs across two research-intensive universities, we found that BG and NBG USOs differed in aspects around their "innovative proclivity," "firm innovativeness" and "the nature of the innovation." Specifically, we found that BG USOs had a longer pre-foundation period, focused on a specific invention with limited fields of application, and offered 'really new' innovations. BG USOs' products or services were also developed and largely standardised before market entry, which accelerated their internationalisation. In contrast, NBG USOs were characterised by short pre-foundation periods, relied on incremental innovation and a wide spectrum of innovative competencies. They also relied on technologies with a broad scope of market application and customised their offerings based on client needs, which slowed their market entry and internationalisation.

This paper explores the temporary-permanent wage gap experienced by Italian graduate workers. To evaluate the wage gap along the entire wage distribution and account for heterogeneous effects of temporary employment, we apply the Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regression approach. The results suggest that the monthly net wage earned by Italian highly educated workers having a temporary contract is lower than that of their 'permanent' counterparts even after controlling for a plethora of individual and job characteristics. More than 50% of the wage gap is due to unobserved characteristics. The field of study, more than the location of the University, explains this discrimination effect due to contractual arrangement. Although the latter is verified along the entire distribution, major effects arise among high-paid and low-paid jobs depicting a U-shape pattern. Results are robust to self-selection, endogeneity, and gender controls.

Although recent reforms of higher education (HE) across Europe have involved reconfigurations of internal governance structures, little research has been conducted on the characteristics and practices of governing bodies and their impact on performance. In particular, more empirical evidence is required on the composition of the board of directors, whose role and responsibilities in strategy making and monitoring of university activities have been significantly strengthened. This paper focuses on the issue of diversity in board composition, which has gained increasing attention in the corporate literature but has largely been ignored in HE. Since most studies of diversity in HE have been fragmented, a configurational approach is followed to examine the combinations of diversity of directors that lead to high board performance in universities. Drawing from the literature and considering the characteristics of university governance, four conditions are identified: age, gender, educational background and provenance. The method of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is used to investigate the cases of 18 medium-sized state universities in Italy. The analysis revealed that no single condition is necessary or sufficient, while there are two paths that lead to board effectiveness: low educational background diversity and high provenance diversity combined with high age diversity, and low educational background diversity and high provenance diversity combined with low gender diversity.

Our paper adds to a growing literature of doctoral training by studying factors that drive time-to-completion based on a new and unique data set from an international European graduate school. While previous research focused on individual factors, we inspect the role of institutional factors and the organization of PhD programs for PhD completion. Based on a theoretical model, we elaborate hypotheses on three sets of institutional factors for thesis submission rates. We use event history analysis to analyze register data on 30 entry cohorts of PhD students. Our findings demonstrate the relevance of the factors related to the institutional environment like the density of supervision and support. Furthermore, our results underscore the importance of program structuration through clear deadlines and sufficient length of funding. We conclude with a discussion on effective measures that can be taken by program designers and grant authorities aiming to improve completion rates in PhD schools.

The paper revisits the outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy and particularly in Lombardy region, the first and initially most severely affected area among western countries. First, we provide an overview of the impact of the pandemic in the country and in the region, mentioning the turning points and the main effects on the national and local economy. Second, we focus on the impact in the educational sector, by describing an overview of the university's activities and reporting the actions undertaken by our home university, Politecnico di Milano, a technological university located in Milan (Lombardy region). We report the activities during the three main stages of the pandemic: the reaction, the management of the emergency and the planning of the new normality. Finally, we provide considerations on the main elements emerging from our commentary, showing the prominent roles of governance and communication in ensuring continuity for students, support for faculty and the redesign of services for the administrative staff. A student-centric approach and a high engagement of the entire community are the main elements that brought together the organisation to face the emergency and plan for the future, where the digital and physical layers coexists.

In this paper, we propose a methodology to support the Curriculum Design and Development (CDD) process with the aim of aligning competences provided by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with the ones required by companies. The proposed methodology stems from the identification of companies' training needs and aims at classifying a set of specific competences that are derived through a desk analysis of the existing academic offer. The novelty of the proposed methodology is represented by the introduction of quantitative indicators used for competences' classification which may support decision-makers in the individuation of the expected learning objectives of the curriculum. The proposed approach has been developed and tested in the context of a European Project (TrainERGY -- Training for Energy Efficient Operations) involving four European countries (Italy, Poland, UK and Greece), whose objective was the definition of a transnational curriculum oriented to qualify better practitioners involved in energy efficiency operations in SMEs.

The Gelmini reform implemented in Italy in 2010 was designed to ensure greater efficiency and effectiveness within the higher education (HE) sector. The reform was implemented in a climate of general austerity, which caused severe cuts in public funds for the university system. This paper documents the unintended consequences of the reform in terms of a dramatic reduction in the number of job positions, career speed, and remunerations for academic staff -- which we describe as the 3Ls, i.e. Less staff, Later careers, Lower salaries. While the loss of wages cumulated is approximately equal to the average mortgage value for buying a house, the cost savings of the government are negligible, especially when compared to the adverse effects generated by the austerity reform. The profound inequality in the application, at the expense of younger and qualified faculties, mostly women, may lead to a long-lasting and irreversible consequences such as a loss of qualification and competitiveness for the whole HE system, as shown by the increasing phenomenon of brain drain.

Higher education institutions are in a period of profound transformation. In particular, many governments have implemented mechanisms that attempt to relate funding to performance. In this article, we reflect about the relevance of those changes from a regional point of view, by analysing the recent introduction of a performance-based research funding system in Italy. The findings lead to policy indications, questioning the effectiveness of selective funding of universities based on national research assessment exercises when there is heterogeneity across regions in universities scientific performance and, at the same time, there is a huge dispersion of research performance within the individual universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satellite university campuses – whereby established universities decentralise part of their activities, often to areas previously lacking a university – contribute to the diversification of university systems. While satellite campuses, due to their small scale and limited resources, might perform some activities less efficiently than their larger parent universities, we argue that they are uniquely placed to serve the needs of their localities. Based on the case of a satellite campus in North-West Italy, we show that: (i) the campus' main contribution lies in widening access to higher education to residents who would not attend university in the absence of local provision; (ii) the campus contributes to local development also through research and business and community engagement, and by stimulating local demand for knowledge-intensive services; (iii) research and engagement are more effective for local development where local firms possess relevant absorptive capacity and where there is a favourable institutional framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into higher education has shown that for those who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans* and/or Queer (LGBTQ), universities are places where both direct and indirect discrimination is experienced. This paper reports the findings from a systematic search and review on gender and sexual diversity in professional practice placements. This was part of a broader project exploring the way that students were supported and educated to provide appropriate support for LGBTQ people using their services and whether students who identified as LGBTQ experienced specific issues regarding the (non)disclosure of their gender or sexual diversity in placement settings. Three primary themes were identified. Environment: which relates to the way that homophobic and transphobic discrimination is experienced in professional practice. Influence: the importance of faculty on the environment as both a positive and negative force. Interventions: how students support LGBTQ people who use their services and how educators intervene with students who identify as LGBTQ. Our review showed how students in all included disciplines report feeling under-prepared for the realities of working with LGBTQ people in practice. However there are examples of positive practices which can support LGBTQ students through navigating disclosure of their own identities, as well as enabling all students to act as advocates and allies for the LGBTQ service users and peers/colleagues that they will inevitably work with and alongside, throughout their careers.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an empirical examination of the supply-side factors influencing dropout rates in MBA programs. We analyze the extent to which the resources and characteristics of the program (content, teaching methodology, course load, class size, partnerships, reputation) influence these rates. A GLM analysis was conducted on data obtained from a final sample of 94 executive MBA programs in Western Europe. The results indicate that several supply side factors significantly affect dropout: intensity of case study learning, number of credits per month, class size, and proportion of lessons given at partner institutions. Several implications for the design and management of higher education programs have been drawn from this research.

Diversity in Higher Education system has been a central topic for both scholars and policy-makers for decades. Several studies have investigated how to measure diversity and the nature of its determinants so far; however, contradictory empirical evidence has emerged. This paper contributes to this literature by adopting a methodological approach that starts from the analysis of positioning paths of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in order to explore the diversity of HE systems. A comprehensive quantitative analysis performed across two HE systems over time shows how detecting the positioning of HEIs can provide information that an analysis of diversity at the level of the entire system might hide, in particular (I) if and how compliant and distinctiveness are concurrently displayed (II) in which dimensions positioning shifts are more likely to occur and (III) which groups of HEIs influence more the level of diversity in a HE system.

This essay provides a comprehensive interpretative framework to understand the reasons why the school-to-work transition is so slow in Italy, a typical example of the South European regime, where the educational system is rigid and sequential (education before work experience), the labor market has become more flexible through two-tier labor reforms and the family has an important role of shock absorber during the passage to adulthood. The main thesis of this essay is that the traditional disorganization of the educational and training system coupled with slow economic growth, rather than only low labor flexibility explains high (youth) unemployment. Important reforms – Jobs Act, Good School, European Youth Guarantee and reform of employment services – have been recently implemented, which are favoring a slow convergence toward the European social model, but it is still too early to draw conclusions as to the impact of such reforms on youth labor-market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a systematic review on the Critical Thinking (CT) intervention studies reported in the national literature of the countries involved in the CRITHINKEDU project. The aim of this paper is to characterise critical thinking intervention studies in higher education institutions across different fields. The review process has been carried out by applying content analysis and it is comprised of five stages. A rubric was built in conjunction with a literature review on CT interventions and data analysis. Slight differences were identified among the examined fields. The main results show that immersion is the most frequent approach in all of the fields, followed by infusion, which is only implemented in STEM and social sciences. All of the interventions are short-term and address either CT skills exclusively, or deal with skills and dispositions together. Further research is needed in order to explore which aspects of the CT interventions are successful in the promotion of CT in higher education (HE), as well as the CT components, which are targeted during instruction.

Scholarly studies of international student mobility programs have increased during the last two decades, particularly following the Bologna Declaration. Nevertheless, a systematic review of international student mobility programs and the outcomes and benefits derived from participation in such programs has not been undertaken. This paper provides a comprehensive review of studies examining the various outcomes of student participation in short-term international mobility programs and identifies under-researched areas such as employment and career outcomes. A future research agenda based on the review is outlined, along with recommendations for improving research designs in order to increase our understanding of the short- and long-term outcomes of international student mobility programs.

The paper analyses which conditions may predict a better salary for people who got a PhD in social sciences and humanities (SS&H) in 13 European countries. Among the controlling variables, predictors are also: change of country of residence; percentage of time spent respectively in research and managerial activities; and impacts achieved during one's PhD programme. Findings, but also policy implications both for PhD programme planners and PhD candidates, are: some specific impacts such as having advised policy-makers, having released interviews to media and having managed and coordinated projects, all predict better salaries for PhD holders in SS&H, other things being equal. To move geographically out of one's country where PhD was awarded is also a good predictor of better wages, provided PhD holders do not swap sectors after attainment of PhD.

Doctoral supervision has attracted significant attention from higher education bodies over the last 15 years, stimulated by shifts in educational and socio-political contexts including what supports the knowledge economy and the stakeholdership of students. This paper conceptualises work worlds through Heideggerian discourse and presents exploratory findings from interviews with workplace supervisors analysed within the framework of the SuperProfDoc research project. It then draws on these findings and the mentoring and coaching literature to contribute to integrating supervision practices between the academy and the workplace.

The changing nature of doctoral education over the past three decades has taken on a triadic relationship constructed around expectations-process-purposes and has generated much commentary and critique. The intention of this paper is to focus on the notion of "purpose" from the perspective of doctoral supervisors which we have collated into four themes labelled "knowledge generation," "recognition," "positionality" and "instrumentalism". The themes were generated via the analysis of semi-structured interviews undertaken with 50 doctoral supervisors as part of the SuperProfDoc project investigating their practice.

This paper explores supervisor development in the light of information generated by the Erasmus-funded project on the modern doctorate. It is structured in four phases. Firstly examining interview data to isolate some distinguishing features of the modern doctorate. Secondly re-examining that data to see if these distinguishing features can be mapped on to an existing framework of approaches to research supervision. Thirdly looking at the survey responses relating to that same framework. Fourthly, having found coherence with the five approaches, the initial outcomes from a Norwegian project are examined. The project worked with experienced academics nominated to 'support and develop their colleague supervisors' primarily by designing and leading supervisor development programmes. The findings show that the original framework is also appropriate for supervisors of the modern doctorate and that there are some important organisational factors that need to be taken into account when developing the developers of supervisors.

This paper examines individual and institutional characteristics which may influence the outcomes of university students' careers. Withdrawals, course changes, delays and graduations of students enrolled in first-cycle degree courses in a large public university in Italy are examined. Individual longitudinal data from administrative archives were used, taking into account both the temporal dimension and the organisational and structural characteristics of the degree courses. Results indicate that the profile of a successful student is defined by both socio-demographic factors and pre-university educational experience. At course level, restricted access to courses, study fields and course size were important for students' university careers.

The literature has suggested that students' progress at university is influenced by their personal characteristics; this article examines whether these factors act differently according to the study fields of degree courses in which students are enrolled. In particular, the factors influencing the various outcomes of the university programme (withdrawals, course changes, delays, completion of degrees) in three-year degree courses in a large Italian university are analysed from the perspective of study fields. The authors examined the records of over 32,000 students enrolling from academic years 2002/3 to 2005/6 in 84 first-cycle degree courses, grouped in four different fields of study. Analyses were conducted by considering the time dimension within the methodological approach of survival analysis, by means of individual longitudinal data from university administrative archives. A discrete-time method for competing risks event history analysis was applied to study the determinants of university outcomes in the various fields of study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper tests longitudinally the hypothesis that educational subcultures in terms of which students interpret their role and their educational setting affect the probability of dropping out of higher education. A logistic regression model was performed to predict drop out at the beginning of the second academic year for the 823 freshmen of a three-year bachelor degree in psychology at an Italian university. The model uses both measures of students' educational subculture and incoming levels of knowledge and skills. The probability of dropping out was used as dependent variable. Results show that the probability of dropping out is significantly associated with students' educational subculture--but not with their incoming level of knowledge and skills. Our results suggest the need to recognize the meaning as a legitimate variable of research and of intervention in the field of educational success.

In this paper, we estimate the effect of receiving financial aid for a cohort of students who enrolled at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in the year 2007/2008, through a propensity score matching approach. Using administrative data about these students for four years, the impact of the financial aid on several dimensions of academic performance was evaluated: formative credits obtained after one year, dropout probability in the first and second year, graduation in the legal duration of the course, and graduation after four years. Overall, a positive and statistically significant effect of the grant is found and this finding is stable across several robustness checks. Exploring the heterogeneity of this effect, it is demonstrated that the effect is higher for immigrants, Italians who moved from another region for studying, and students attending an engineering course. Evidence that unobservable factors (such as students' own intrinsic academic motivation) account for an important part of the estimated impact of the financial aid is also found.

Higher education systems featuring intense competition have developed world-class universities, capable of attracting top professors and students and considerable public–private funding. This does not occur in non-competitive systems, where highly talented faculty and students are dispersed across all institutions. In such systems, the authors propose the budding of spin-off universities, staffed by the migration of top scientists from the entire public research system. This article illustrates the proposal through an example: the spin-off of a new university in Rome, Italy staffed with the best professors from the three current public city universities. Such a faculty would offer top national research productivity, a magnet to attract the other critical ingredients of a world-class university: talented students, abundant resources and visionary governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an analysis is carried out whether objective tests and subjective self-assessments in international large-scale studies yield similar results when looking at cross-national differences in the effects of skills on earnings, and skills patterns across countries, fields of study and gender. The findings indicate that subjective skills measures do not correlate well with objective measures of similar constructs when looking at cross-national differences. Countrywise associations between subjective skills measures and earnings do not correlate well with those found using objective skills measures. Moreover, cross-national differences in the level of subjective skills measures do not correlate well with cross-national differences in skill levels based on objective tests. Nor do gender differences found using subjective skills measures correlate with those found using objective skills measures. This does not mean that self-assessments cannot be used, but they need to be restricted to analysing within-country differences. Within countries, self-assessments do a good job in predicting skills differences across fields of study and also in predicting the effect of skills on earnings. When comparing gender differences in skills levels within countries, however, one needs to be aware that females tend to overestimate their skills levels in typical "female" domains like literacy.

This paper empirically examines the impact of academic research on high-tech manufacturing growth of 28 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and emerging countries over the 1991-2005 period. A standard research and development (R&D) expenditure based measure is found to be too general to capture the input in high-tech research. To overcome this problem, a novel proxy for high-tech research investment--the supercomputer capacity--is proposed. Empirical evidence strongly supports this choice of variable. It is also found that academic R&D exerts a larger growth effect on high-tech output than its industry and government counterparts, but only the impact differential between academic and government R&D is statistically significant.

Higher education reforms informed by the managerial paradigm aim at increasing the capability of the university leadership to steer research activity, with no substantial variation across the disciplines. However, literature points out the limitations of universities to act as strategic actors, as well as the differences between the disciplines that may influence the efficacy of steering. Evidence from the Dutch and Italian systems shows that reforms improve the steering potential. Overall, steering is more effective in new sciences, while other disciplines remain hardly steerable; thus, the discipline mix appears to influence steering strategy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]