Italy's Intellectual Suicide: 9 out of 10 Researchers Will Lose Their Jobs by 2026
In the world of Italian research, precarious employment is not an anomaly, but a structural condition of the system. And this means that we will soon witness a “brain drain” abroad. The ADI (National Association of Italian PhD Students and Doctors) presented a discouraging report to the Senate in recent days: “We are facing to the most urgent employment crisis in the country ,” warns the association.
The numbers of precarious employmentThe survey, carried out by collecting 2,888 responses from researchers active in Italian universities and research centers, highlighted how by July 2026, almost 9 out of 10 researchers will be forced to leave academia: 86.5% of currently active job positions, in fact, will expire within the next year. "This will have dramatic effects on the quality of research and teaching precisely when universities will be required to make a greater effort due to the opening of access to medicine and the challenges related to improving the training offer", reads the ADI press release.
As further confirmation of the precarious condition of many researchers, more than 30% of research-related positions last less than a year – a percentage that rises to 43% for positions funded by PRIN and PON. Furthermore, 50.5% of scholarships and 42.8% of research grants have the same short duration. These are short contracts but require many hours of work “without any form of protection for overtime, sickness and unemployment”, in the face of unsatisfactory salaries: “The median net monthly salary is only 1,630 euros ” the press release reports. Furthermore, the nature of research funding is defined as “ fragmented and unstable ”: 28% of positions are funded by the Pnrr, 26% by Prin, only 24% by institutional funds (Ffo), “demonstrating the dependence on fixed-term projects”.
This situation has repercussions on the mental health of those who suffer from it: "74% of those interviewed are very worried about finding a job in the next two years. The data on sleep quality, stress and the testimonies collected clearly show that precariousness has significant negative effects on mental well-being", writes ADI. Those who pay the price are especially female researchers , who on the one hand obtain more research grants and scholarships, but on the other hand are assigned fewer fixed-term research contracts than their colleagues, signaling a gap structural in accessing the most stable positions.
"These numbers describe a research system that not only does not value young researchers, but pushes them to leave after years of training and fundamental contributions to public research and the Italian system ", reads the press release from the association, which underlines how a failure to change course will favor the brain drain and a low-quality development of our country, thus condemned to "lose from the start the challenge of ecological, digital and demographic transitions".
The chronic instability of the Italian research system is based on a set of structural causes that have been intertwined for decades. The first is the public underfunding of universities: Italy invests less than the OECD average per student and has significantly cut funding since the 2000s. The reforms that followed one another – from the “Gelmini” onwards – have introduced competitive logics without accompanying them with an adequate increase in resources, ending up accentuating inequalities between universities and the fragmentation of the system.
Another unresolved issue is the lack of a national recruitment plan . Hiring is left to the availability of individual universities, which must deal with budget constraints and rigid bureaucracy. This produces intermittent competitions, structural delays in calls for tenders and a systematic recourse to precarious contracts to make up for the lack of structured personnel. Furthermore, the dependence on competitive and temporary funding, such as PRIN, PON or PNRR funds, prevents long-term planning of research and makes careers unstable by definition.
Finally, a short-sighted cultural vision weighs that does not recognize the strategic role of research for the future of the country. In the absence of a paradigm shift, the real risk is that of a progressive impoverishment of the Italian university system, incapable of innovating, training and retaining its best energies.
Precariousness in research is not an exclusively Italian phenomenon, but Italy stands out in Europe for its severity and for the lack of effective tools to protect and enhance young researchers. In Germany , for example, the tenure track system allows the most promising researchers to access stable positions within certain timeframes, reducing uncertainty and facilitating life and career planning. In France , the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) offers permanent contracts after the doctorate to a significant portion of researchers, ensuring continuity in research projects and investing in building long-term skills. Even in Spain , where there are difficulties, there are competitive but more predictable paths to stabilization.
In terms of investments , Italy remains at the bottom of the class: while countries like Germany and Sweden allocate over 3% of their GDP to research and development, Italy remains consistently below 1.5%. This imbalance is reflected in an insufficient number of structured positions, a lack of ordinary funding for universities and a chronic dependence on one-off, project-based funding. The result is a system that, instead of retaining and enhancing its talents, forces them to seek opportunities abroad , where research is recognized as a strategic investment.
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