Essays in Applied Economics

This thesis studies the relationship between higher education and work in Italy from two complementary perspectives. It examines students who engage in paid employment while still enrolled in university and compulsory curricular internships, understood as work-based or practical training activities introduced into degree programmes to facilitate the transition to employment. These two experiences differ in origin and purpose. Paid work during enrolment arises from students’ own participation in the labour market and may reflect financial need, the accumulation of experience, or preferences for autonomy and financial independence from the family. Curricular internships, by contrast, are formally incorporated into degree programmes by universities themselves. The thesis brings these perspectives together through two related questions: under what conditions students combine university studies with paid work, and whether compulsory internships improve graduates’ transition into employment. These questions are especially relevant in the Italian context. Over the past decades, access to higher education has expanded, increasing participation in tertiary education and making the student population more diverse in social background, economic resources, and capacity to bear the costs of study. Wider access, however, has not translated into equal conditions of attendance. Students enter university with different family resources, different degrees of economic security, and different capacities to sustain the direct and indirect costs of higher education. The Italian system also remains strongly reliant on families for the financing of university studies, while public student support is selective, incomplete, and uneven across territories. These features make student employment particularly relevant: paid work may help students sustain university attendance, but it may also reflect unequal resources, household constraints, or uneven access to formal employment opportunities. Taken together, the two chapters show that the relationship between higher education and work takes different forms at different stages of the university experience. During enrolment, paid employment is shaped by family resources, public support, household conditions, and local labour-market opportunities. At the transition to work, compulsory internships represent an institutional attempt to connect degree programmes more closely to employment, but their returns are uneven across degree cycles and groups of graduates. The thesis therefore shows that work may enter higher education through different routes, and that its meaning and consequences depend on the conditions under which students study and move into the labour market. This points to two policy margins: strengthening support for students who combine study and work, and improving the design, quality, and labour-market relevance of curricular internships.