Entrepreneurship and innovation: the role played by graduates

As is well-known, the ongoing crisis (ISTAT, 2013; CENSIS, 2013) "has eroded the capacity for resistance of families and businesses, created widespread social unease, caused expectations to fall sharply, and triggered a radical change of consumer behaviour” (CNEL, 2013). Against this backdrop, assessing the employment conditions of young people, especially those with higher educational attainment, is of paramount importance. Such an assessment is hindered by the many reforms of curricula undertaken in succession, which make it difficult to identify the effects of temporary and structural factors, thus impairing interpretation of results. These paper will anyway try to provide an overview of the situation, despite some difficulties and limitations: a thorough analysis of the various aspects and degree types under study, as well as for the definitions and method employed. An analysis of the main employment-related factors showed that graduates’ employment conditions further deteriorated over the last year. This was observed not only among recent graduates, whose employment outcomes tend to be poorer because of their small work experience, but also among their peers who graduated in less recent years. This paper present the main results of the 16th ALMALAUREA Report on graduates’ employment conditions, which has involved nearly 450,000 graduates from all the 64 Universities that are members of ALMALAUREA. The Survey refers to 220,000 post reform first and second level graduates interviewed at one year from graduation; all the 2010 second level graduates (more than 72,000) interviewed at 3 years from the achievement of the degree and all the 2008 second level graduates (more than 54,000) investigated at five years from the completion of their studies. Finally, two specific investigations, usually run by ALMALAUREA, have focused on the first-level graduates of 2010 and 2008 that did not continue their university studies (nearly 53,000 and more than 44,000), interviewed respectively at three and five years after graduation. In addition to the detailed analysis of the recent trends in the labor market, the survey deepened the following issues: the entrepreneurship of the Italian graduates in times of economic crisis, highlighting characteristics and propensities of those who decide to undertake entrepreneurial activities; the second level Italian graduates working abroad.