Long-Run Labour-Market Effects of CONICET Capacity and Early-Career Research Retention

National scientific councils play a decisive role in structuring academic labor markets and sustaining scientific capacity. In Argentina, the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) represents the primary vehicle for doctoral training, post-doctoral specialization, and entry into tenure-track research positions. Recent scholarship demonstrates that modern scientific systems experience profound workforce churn, where early-career researchers enter at high volumes but face severe retention bottlenecks [1]. Investigating the long-run labour-market effects of council capacity illuminates how public human capital investments translate into sustainable research productivity or broader industrial knowledge transfers.

Structural tensions within academic career pipelines undermine both research integrity and researcher retention. The structural imbalance between the expanding cohort of doctorate holders and the limited absorption capacity of permanent academic posts creates prolonged precariousness [1]. Moreover, standard evaluation systems reliant on commercial prestige publication metrics exacerbate vulnerability and distort research autonomy [3]. When early-career funding programmes fail to secure genuine scientific independence or tenure pathways, researchers face occupational mismatch, prolonged career disruption, and elevated risks of brain drain [3].

Macroeconomic volatility and institutional funding fluctuations further intensify these labour-market vulnerabilities across researcher cohorts. External shocks and contractions in institutional funding capacity historically generate persistent earnings gaps, reduced field-of-study alignment, and distorted career progression among postsecondary graduates and early-career investigators [5]. Assessing how institutional capacity fluctuations in CONICET govern researcher retention requires a systematic qualitative synthesis of scientific labor models, publication trajectory dynamics, and structural evaluation regimes [1, 3].

This dissertation provides a rigorous examination of the long-term labour-market outcomes of CONICET capacity building and early-career researcher retention mechanisms. By evaluating structural workforce turnover, funding architectures, and evaluation policies, the analysis establishes a conceptual foundation for reforming academic career structures and maximizing public science investments.