Abstract
The academic career system in the Italian university is dealt with a particular focus on the period from late ‘90s to 2014, when it has been reformed several times. After having described the evolution of the professoriate from 1969 to 2014 and the general legal framework of the academic profession (i.e. recruitment and career system, contractual status, types of positions, salary scales) the chapter focuses on changes in the period cited above. In particular the following issues will be considered:
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1.
A historical perspective of how the Italian professoriate has evolved between the Second World War and 2010.
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2.
Reforms of academic recruitment between 1998 and 2010 highlighting the changes they aimed at introducing and the effects they produced.
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3.
The recruitment and career advancement logic characterized by the lasting corporative-patrimonialist informal arrangements in recruitment/advancement decision-making and the internal labour market dynamic of career progressions.
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4.
The process of institutionalisation of non-tenured and fixed-term academics, creating an academic periphery and a highly stratified profession.
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5.
The academics’ perceptions and about their career conditions, opportunities and perspectives drawn from the Changing Academic Profession survey.
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Vaira, M. (2017). Between Tradition and Transition: The Academic Career in Italy. In: Machado-Taylor, M., Soares, V., Teichler, U. (eds) Challenges and Options: The Academic Profession in Europe. The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45844-1_8
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