New promotion patterns in Italian universities: Less seniority and more productivity? Data from ASN

The new habilitation (ASN), established in Italy in 2010 and launched in 2012, was introduced to filter eligible candidates in the competition of associate and full professorships. Its purpose is to cut off poor candidates on the basis of individual scientific productivity before they might be hired in competitions where patronage may favor them. This study considers four disciplinary fields-physics; engineering; law; economics. The main hypothesis is that candidates' current positions and seniority (years after last promotion) should play no part in determining the award of eligibility since only indicators of output should be considered by evaluating committees. Considering only the applications to full professorships and after controlling for such indicators as publications (three different indicators of), data regarding affiliation with committee members, age, gender, current position and time since last promotion show better predictors of attaining the eligibility to be: (1) quality of scientific output (H index and articles in top-ranked journals); (2) current ladder rank; (3) younger age, especially within people of the same ranks. As a result, the traditional seniority pattern appears to be yielding place before quicker and steeper career paths for the more productive.