The precarious salary of young people affects everyone, including those who have higher university studies, according to the U-Ranking report prepared by the BBVA Foundation and the Valencian Institute for Economic Research (IVIE) on job placement.
According to the study, only ten university degrees guarantee that 80% of the graduates have a salary of more than 1,500 euros five years after obtaining the degree. These are Medicine, Information Technology and various engineering (aeronautical, computer, industrial, energy, electrical, naval, biomedical and textile). Also a set of heterogeneous services grouped under the same parameter (prevention and occupational safety, protection of property and people, military education or gastronomy).
In the rest of the 101 fields of knowledge analyzed by U-Ranking, those who reach salaries of this order are not the overwhelming majority. What's more, there are degrees in which salary insecurity is overwhelming. This is the case of Archeology (only 10% have a salary above 1,500 euros), Occupational Therapy (15%), Conservation and Restoration (16%), Fine Arts (21%), Speech Therapy and Marine Sciences (22% ), Information and Documentation (23%), or Art History and Geography (25%).
If we increase the focus and consider the set of fields of knowledge, the 101 analyzed that condense the 4,000 existing titles, there are 50 degrees in which at least half of their graduates earn 1,500 euros after five years.
It must be taken into account that the U-Ranking has been prepared according to the work results achieved in 2019 by graduates in the 2013-2014 academic year. Therefore, they do not include the impact of the pandemic on certain professions, nor the effects that advances in artificial intelligence or the first retirements of the baby-boomer generation are having on the labor market. The skills that are requested can vary and highlight those in the social field or those of caring for people. Mathematicians (in number 21), teachers (33 and 63), physiotherapists (56) and psychologists (82) could rise in the following editions.
Jobs with salaries of more than 1,500 euros is one of the variables included in the U-Ranking to measure labor insertion, which shows with a synthetic index that goes from 1.38, obtained by Medicine, to 0.5, from Archaeology. The others are the employment rate, a job that requires a university degree, and a job in what has been studied.
In the color chart provided by the authors of the study with a column for each concept, a uniform green color is observed for the first twenty that correspond to Medicine, the diversity of engineering as well as Computer Science, Dentistry, Pharmacy and Nursing.
Medicine has an employment rate of 95%, 92% of those employed earning 1,500 or more euros per month, and practically 100% of graduates working in highly-skilled occupations and in activities directly related to their studies. From this bulk, the areas of knowledge begin to be colored yellow, orange and red, depending on the percentage of graduates in that criterion.
The lowest employment rates correspond to Philosophy and Conservation and Restoration (64%) or Art History (65%). Also to Literature (68%), which is accompanied by jobs not related to it (40%) and mileurista salaries (53% of the total), but the vast majority work in higher education jobs. It should be noted that Spanish youth have almost eight points of difference (below) in employability compared to the rest of the European youth.
In occupations related to the study carried out, in addition to engineers and health professionals, young people who have studied Oenology, Optics, Podiatry, Biotechnology, Veterinary Medicine or Physiotherapy stand out, with percentages higher than 80%. The orange in these is that they are poorly paid.
With percentages of less than 50% of the graduates working in what they have studied are graduates in International Relations (who, however, have good jobs and relatively good salaries), Anthropology (only 35% work on their own, but 91% hold a high-level position), Criminology (which only stands out in employability), Politics, Sociology, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Occupational Therapy, Art History and, with only 22% of graduates, Geography, They also do not earn much or in positions that require higher education. But the employment rate is above 80%. Graduates in Music and Performing Arts have an employment rate of 83%, but four out of six do not work for what they have studied and their salary is less than 1,500 euros.
Spain is at the European tail in undervalued university students. Only six out of ten graduates with higher education hold highly-skilled jobs, compared to almost eight in Europe.
According to the U-Ranking, a large number of graduates hold positions below their educational level: between 30 and 50 percent of half of the degrees. Finance and Accounting (34%), Tourism (39%) or Management and Administration (43%) stand out.
The major determinants of insertion are the studies chosen and, secondly, the community in which the young graduate resides or to which they move to work.
The U-Ranking also measures the job placement of each campus. Universities with specializations (polytechnics and some private ones) achieve the best results and penalize the more generalist campuses and those located in territories with less dynamic labor markets.
The report ranks the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in first place, with the following data for the average of its graduates: a Social Security affiliation rate of 76%, a salary with an average contribution base of 32,242 euros per year and 74.5% of employees adjusted to their educational level. Two other polytechnics, the one in Cartagena and the one in Catalonia, together with the Universidad Católica Santa Teresa de Jesús de Ávila and the University of Nebrija, complete the list up to fifth place.
As is logical, the polytechnics, with a high weight of degrees with very good insertion results, such as computer science or engineering, stand out in the top positions. Also at the top of the table are many private and young universities, which have recently designed their offer of degrees, choosing titles with good job placement.
On the contrary, generalist public universities (the Complutense of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Granada or Salamanca) offer degrees with limited employability, which lowers the level of total insertion and places them in the lower third of the list.
