The data corroborates it. Studying a master’s degree increases the possibilities of promotion at work and salary improvement. This is confirmed by the 2023 Job Insertion Survey of graduates from Catalan universities from the Agència per a la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari de Catalunya (AQU Catalunya), presented this Wednesday and in which more than 40,000 people have been surveyed. -who represent 46% of the reference population- who graduated before the pandemic in more than 1,500 degrees at one of the 12 Catalan universities.
And not only that. University graduates in Catalonia with a master’s degree reach full employment for the first time – it is considered below 5% unemployment -, with 4.2% unemployment three or four years after graduating. Graduates with a doctorate have an unemployment rate of 1.7% and those with a degree drop to 5.5%, with 2023 being the year with a historical minimum since 2011 for the unemployment rate of university graduates in Catalonia .
The survey figures indicate that 3 out of 4 people with a master’s degree had already worked before obtaining it and that 65% of them have improved their professional category and/or their remuneration after completing it.
In this sense, 94% of these people are employed today, three or four years after obtaining the master’s degree, 90% have a full-time job and 68% have a salary greater than 2,000 euros per month. These percentages are somewhat lower if only one degree has been completed (91% – 85% – 62%). On the other hand, if you have completed a doctorate they are higher: 96% – 91% – 84%.
In presenting the survey data, the Minister of Research and Universities of the Generalitat, Joaquim Nadal, assured that these figures highlight that “it is not true that universities are factories for the unemployed”, since they achieve full employment in masters and doctorates and is close to bachelor’s degrees.
The study also shows that 6.5% of Spanish bachelor’s degree holders, 8.2% of master’s degree holders and 11% of doctorate holders work abroad, while one in three foreign master’s degree students stay working in the State after graduating (one in four master’s students in Catalonia is foreign).
These data, according to Nadal, show that “there is a certain capacity to attract talent and at the same time a greater capacity to retain talent than the system had last year.” In this sense, he has asserted that “going abroad should be done, but it is important that it be a round trip.”
Among the master’s degrees, the studies that have the greatest drain on talent in Catalonia are engineering, with 11.7%, followed by science (10.3%) and humanities (9.8%).
The study also highlights that English continues to be the main competence to improve, followed by written expression in the degrees and written and oral expression in the case of the masters, to which Nadal has assured that the Catalan university system wants to be “trilingual ” with Catalan, Spanish and English.
The coordinator of the study, Anna Prades, has highlighted that the survey shows that the “more training, the better job insertion”, since both the employment percentages and average salaries grow, as well as the non-university level functions performed by employees decrease. as the degree is higher.
However, two out of three doctors hired in companies believe that they do not perform functions appropriate to their educational level, while those who do so in universities and research centers claim to perform doctoral functions.
The study observes a change in trend in the access route to the first job for graduates since, although contacts continue to be the first, it has decreased from 25.3% to 21.2%, and has grown in weight web portals, which between 2020 and 2023 has gone from 6.9% to 19.1%.
Prades has pointed out that the survey reflects a “stagnation” in the level of satisfaction with the degree completed, since the doctorates who would repeat the degree remain at around 82% and the master’s degree at 71%, but it drops from 72.6%. from 2020 to 69.9% in degree courses.
This means that a third of graduates in bachelor’s and master’s degrees would not repeat their studies, and of these, 40.7% in bachelor’s degrees and 50.7% in master’s degrees would not do so due to “dissatisfaction with the design or quality of the Title”.
