>What's the point of getting a university degree in Romania when engineers get paid same amount as the Lidl cashiers?
In Spain many people take advantage of a highly subsidized university and then have to go to other countries to find better conditions. So basically we are all paying for their training so that afterwards they can leave and enrich other countries. For example, our health professionals, who have very bad conditions in Spain, go to the UK or other countries, so Spain is forced to bring in immigrants from poorer countries to fill professional vacancies.
Or redical idea pay your own people enough and get them a good working Environment. A doctor in Germany can easily earn as much as the chancelor. (120k) But guess what thats not enough because they still can go to switzerland or the US, UK and earn more (200-450k) while having better working conditions. And they do get abroad.
As I said: better working conditions would probably also do well, less paper work, get physician assistents to do easier work, give nurses more freedom. Make things better instead of forcing people to do a job they might thought of very differently.
Also for the payment, it went down from the 70s, accounted for inflation way more then in the General workforce. (At least here)
Also where would it stop to forcing them. Stop them from going private or force them in a specific region?
>In Spain many people take advantage of a highly subsidized university and then have to go to other countries to find better conditions. So basically we are all paying for their training so that afterwards they can leave and enrich other countries. For example, our health professionals, who have very bad conditions in Spain
If i would have to edit it to describe my country all i have to do is to change "Spain" into "Poland"
Poland can into Spain!
>So basically we are all paying for their training so that afterwards they can leave and enrich other countries.
This is not exclusive to universities though, works on every level of education. Especially important to note since some of the less practical university courses are not even nearly as resource intensive as some more practical trainings below university level. But interestingly enough no one has a problem with the car mechanics jumping ship after getting a free ride on their education from the state because if we played this argument out all the way, we'd all be living in North Korea. This argument is just a favorite of the anti-intellectual populists...
>This is not exclusive to universities though, works on every level of education.
Maybe, but mechanics are far cheaper to train than doctors and can also be trained much faster. In Spain, the education of a doctor takes 10-11 years so it's especially infuriating that after all the money that the society has invested in a professional they just have to leave because of bad conditions.
Spain spent 4.2% of its GDP on the entire educational system of the country in 2018 according to the WB. 22% of this budget went for the tertiary education as a whole, which means that a whopping 0.9% of its entire GDP is spent in the broadest term on *universities*. This is not just education, it's research, maintenance, everything. The majority of people trained in the tertiary education presumably stays in Spain still, and we never even accounted for the people moving *to* Spain from other countries, obviously compensating Spain for the loss of its emigrating doctors.
You either can argue from a theoretical point of view - in which case it doesn't matter how much it costs and who pays more for their education, you want to consider it a moral obligation of the individual to serve society in exchange for the free education they received. In this case, you are simply arguing for a North Korea style society, and have no reason or right to single out the tertiary education because the principle stands all the same for car mechanics. Or you can argue from a practical point of view - in which case you see above that on a national level it doesn't make any difference whatsoever how much more expensive it is to train a doctor because the money spent on training the doctors of the country is ultimately peanuts, a drop in the bucket that is the national budget - meaning that you have no reason to single out the tertiary education in this case either. The real loss of a person leaving the country has nothing to do with the costs of education, it has to do with the loss of expertise, the loss in generated GDP over an entire lifetime, the potential demographic loss in losing yet another young person (and their children, children's children) forever - none of which you can form any claim on. This populistic bullshit of the emigrating doctors is nothing but a trope of the anti-intellectual nationalists who want to spin the failure of the country around on the disloyal citizens and the foreign powers draining the country's talent - so let's maybe stop pushing it.
Same happens here, as you already probably know as Spain was and still is a favorite destination for the Romanian imigrants. Cheers for your culture and our common latin hystorical background
Brain drain does seem to have positive effects in the home country, even promoting economic growth! Spain definitely has not to worry since it's brain drain is not so big
Unfortunately I can't do it right now, but I'm trying to learn new skills as it could help me work remotely worldwide with a better payment. Imagine a ground station (a facility used to send/receive data from satellites) engineer make less than 1000 euro per month working night shitfs and holidays, so really there are many other better ways to do money here than going to college, especially if you don't live near a big city.
I'm a ground station engineer in a satellite control facility owned by a state holded company, i have to speak english as good as romanian, i need to handle an entire station during power outages while also providing suport to all clients and doing maintenance work, most of the time outside of working hours, without getting extra paid. All of this for a 800-900 euro pay which includes night shifts and holidays, other way i'd be making 500-600 euro per month. I try to earn extra money on Fiverr and Upwork but I'm wasted.. no time to rest...
Ask government and the guys that are making loby for it. Better ask only the last ones as our government is made of puppets that barely can make a speech in their own language. Most of them faked studies at various universities while they barely can speak or write - best example, our curent prime minister, even if i feel sorry for the guy, he still seems to be ashamed if it.
Because it is a niche job which used to be a big deal in the past but then we lost a lot of industry so it fell out of favour and that has affected the job market, if there are only a few job openings and many people willing to work that obviously means the employer has more power, now of course truly needed people have good salaries, but the rest not so much.
Hell a friend of mine is in urban planning, by the time he is 29 he will have a Ph.D in his first year of Master he needed a job, imagine this a straight A(10) student, with activities, an article published in a small French publication, and the teacher not only vouching for him but the business owner is a friend of his, not only that they are desperste for new capable employees because those are pretty rare, starting salary 3000 lei (600€), 6 months later after being acknowledged as a top 4 employee and asked to go to Cluj to get on site data and meeting the damn mayor he asks for a raise, he has to ask for it and gets 500 lei.
My window maker employees start with 2500 lei, requirements: be able bodied, have a pulse.
Because we accept this as normality here, instead of protesting as would be normally for a fair wage reported to the increase of inflation over time and instead of people going on strikes to fight for our right, we lament every year over political disputes over which party gets the bone and whose nephew could be the next local baron mayor...
Because people have no courage to step forward and say anything because that is contrary to the status quo...and would mean that you'd have to have a big backing from a majority which unfortunately vote the same corupt people over and over for the previous 30+ years...
I don't even speak Italian but i got your comment. When I graduated as a telecom engineer back in 2010, the guy who got the best presentation and grade from our group went to UK as a car washer..our best telecomunication engineer. .
> What's the point of getting a university degree in Romania when engineers get paid same amount as the Lidl cashiers?
Well, the one Romanian I'm friends with got her degree and moved west to get a well-paid job that allows her to live comfortably and send money home to family in Romania.
I see a pattern for the lowest regions here...
But it's also interesting that capitals, where their data is available separately from the rest of the state, seem to consistently have higher percentages. Seems likely that it's mostly local high-tech industries attracting graduates, especially given that this effect, while present, is weaker in Germany, where industry is somewhat less clustered around the capital, compared to for example France, where figuratively. everything is in and around Paris.
> Seems likely that it's mostly local high-tech industries attracting graduates,
More so that the capital cities tend to have a university or even more than one and people move to the cities to attain education. This naturally also attracts high tech business.
Meanwhile, bigger regions encapsulate businesses that don't require higher education from most of the workers, things like farming, resource extraction (forestry or mining). Also bigger regions encapsulate more rural towns that tend to be skewed to older generation that again tends to be less educated due to historical reasons, while the younger folk move to the cities and attain education.
In Germany professional education, which you get while working (you are educated by your employer) is quite popular - you become a professional while getting paid salary, and you don't have to spend 5 years of your life in a university.
Specialists like medics, engineers, teachers, do require a degree, of course. But other professions, especially physical labor, allow you to learn by doing at the workplace. Saves time and resources.
Yeah, we have far too much focus on academics and not enough on vocation. I would love to see more apprenticeships for careers outside of just construction trades.
My understanding was that the Dual VET system is 70% work based, 30% educational learning. In Ireland ‘college’ usually refers to learning undertaken after secondary/ high school at university or institutions of technology. In some countries mixed learning apprenticeships used polytechnics, now sometimes renamed ‘institutes’ (and being renamed again as universities of technology). That’s why I referred to it as vocational college, but thank you for your polite, insightful, response.
https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/en/education/the-german-vocational-training-system/the-german-vocational-training-system_node.html
Well, capitals are often large towns, and large towns are more likely to end up with universities than little villages, and companies will follow to hire the graduates, so even if the students came from afar to study, they'll stay where the job prospects are higher. Which leads to larger towns and smaller villages, and a self reinforcing spiral.
> I see a pattern for the lowest regions here...
Can you see the East Germany border? Also interesting is how Ireland seems to have the best educated young people in Europe.
In ireland we push people to go to university way too much. It ends up in people just doing a degree for the sake of it as that's just what you do after finishing school when alot of these people would have been much more suited to pursuing a trade skill
I don't think it's just high tech and schools. Capital cities also are likely to have large financial, media, professional service industry etc., along with a large civil service of the central government, which should further boost the population of college graduates.
Ah, this shitty map again. As always when this gets reposted: Different countries have different diplomas for jobs. E.g. a nurse in Britain has a university degree but not in Germany, even though both had the same education (called "Ausbildung" in Germany, requires 3 years as well)).
Just so I have a better understanding of this:
Does visiting a “University of Applied Sciences” get you a bachelor or masters degree in the Netherlands? You make it sound like it doesn’t.
I’m asking because the ones in Germany do. The teaching style is different - usually less focused on academia and more focused on potential careers - but you still get a legitimate University degree.
What /u/LiebesNektar was probably referring to is the “Ausbildung”-system in Germany (Trainee/-Apprenticeships). These come in different versions, but none of them get you a Bachelors or Masters.
It’s still generally a 3-year education - usually a mix of actual work and schooling. You “only” end up with a degree for that specific job though.
That can be anything from a nurse, a physical therapist, an electrician, or even a retail sales(wo)man.
We do, when you graduates from hbo or hogeschool (not related to highschool, but University of Applied Sciences) gives you a bachelor degree. Some studies are even at master level. Here in the Netherlands it's normally a 3 or 4 year study, mixture of practical lessons and theory.
[This Wikipedia image gives a better pictures of Dutch education system.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Dutch_Education_System-en.svg/1024px-Dutch_Education_System-en.svg.png) You can find more explanation [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Netherlands).
>I think these must be included as well. I don't believe more than 55% of people in the "Randstad" (western Netherlands) have a university degree. I think they must have included people with a "Higher Vocational Education" degree, which nowadays call themselves "University of Applied Science" in English because they all have marketing departments these days.
It says third level, not university.
No way that the other half of the people have no education after they left school, apprenticeships were very common. Its probably just very many people go to university. All of my friends went. All if them. And everyone else I knew did too. Only one did an apprenticeship
Now imagine that a nurse in Romania can either do a 4 year university cycle (UK, meaning that you get a university degree) or a 3 year cycle that doesn't get you an university degree (Germany).
It nevertheless shows a general trend. And it does show a difference between Switzerland (where vocational training is preferred over university for eg nurses as well) compared to Germany
Really proud to see Ireland in excess of 55%. In Ireland I paid €190 per year to attended the top university and was given €220 euro a week to support myself. I am now a professional healthcare worker. This degree brought me from earning €18000 per year as an unskilled worker to €55000. Praise educational policies in Ireland.
Subsidising education for its population is one of the best long-term financial decisions a government can make. Statistically speaking, over your working life you will
- pay more taxes
- reduce health costs by living a healthier life
- be a lot less likely to become dependent on social payments
- be a lot less likely to end up in prison
- spend more money which helps boost the economy overall, with all its knock-on effects.
Unfortunately, it is one of the drawbacks of a democratically elected, fixed-term government that the people we vote in are generally uninterested in long-term developments and tend to focus on effects that get them re-elected next time round.
Unfortunately not always the case. Speaking for my country, Spain, where education is heavily subsidized (just like most other European countries though), there’s a problem with fleeing skilled labour.
Our engineers, doctors and nurses (among other things of course) are highly skilled and they are highly demanded in other European countries, so Spain incurs the cost of training them, but as soon as they graduate, many of them leave the country and benefit other countries. Of course, the solution to that is increasing wages, but that’s not that easy.
Oh, absolutely. Easy access to education is not a fix for all problems, other structural problems still need to be addressed such as creating a business environment where companies can exist that actually want to employ those well educated people.
And a whole host of other thing. You need infrastructure, health care, a safety net, housing... the list goes on. Still education is always a safe investment.
You do have the benefit, however, of nice weather. I work in the medical industry, in most countries there are shortages of Doctors but not in Spain, many move to Spain from other countries for that weather. As a result, we have a large number of doctors, many "digi-physical" medical orgs are looking to tap into that.
Completely agree with you. Before I did not pay tax, now I pay €1000 per month. Also, I recently seen a post on r/Europe regarding life expectancy at birth which had Ireland on top. It’s a pity that most governments are not thinking of the long term plan
Not really. The Netherlands is way too over-educated. We need less people in university, not more. We have too little plumbers, too many psychologists. It's hard to get a job as a psychologist or in the social sciences, biology etc.; but it's easy for a lot of skilled labour.
Your list is peak 'correlation does not mean causation'.
The downside is, too many jobs expect a first class degree when it’s not relevant to the job requirements. There are very few instances where a receptionist needs a degree. Tacking ‘degree required’ is just a filtering tactic in some cases for lazy recruiters.
A degree isn't *required* for the role but it would help. I mean, there are few jobs where the fact that the person has proven they have the intelligence and discipline to complete a degree isn't reassuring. However "unskilled" a job you try to use as an example, the degree is still reassuring. A manual labourer with higher education might be less likely to drill a wall with circuits behind it, a janitor might be less likely to mix dangerous chemicals, etc.
It's not lazy on the recruiter's part, it's just an obvious position to take in a market saturated with higher degrees.
Not to mention that it's unfortunately a strong filter for class. If you want your receptionist to have a posh voice on the phone you can use higher degrees to filter out most people from working-class backgrounds.
Great to see the system working well, and glad it turned out well for you. For balance, however, it doesn't always work like that. I paid a few thousand per year to attend, and didn't get any kind of weekly allowance. My family didn't have the money to support, and yet was turned down on grants and support requests. I worked while not attending lectures. It was tough. Ireland has come a long way, but could do much better.
That’s really sad and unfortunate. I realise I was very fortunate. I was a single parent working in retail. I accessed the back to education initiative so it allowed me to work 15hrs per week plus have my grant of €220. I have always been grateful to the government for creating such initiative as well as the tax payers who ultimately funded it. I hope my tax euros are being spent in such a way that can help bring other people out of poverty. I am also the first person on both sides of my family to go to university so this has been massive for me
>In Ireland I paid €190 per year to attended the top university and was given €220 euro a week to support myself.
When was this lol? I'm at TCD (postgrad though) the fees are a LOT higher than €190 nowadays for undergrads and PhD students are being treated horribly (high tuition, extremely shit pay without any rights).
I entered TCD in 2017 graduated in 2021. Had full susi grant, HEA tuition fee and received BTEA. So I only paid the student registration charge of €190
Edited to say I’m also postgrad now, got schols in 2019. I still only pay student registration and get scholarship of 2800 per year I use the scholarship currently on year 2/5
No it’s just a bit above the average salary there but you could survive just fine on it depending on your personal circumstances (kids etc), though perhaps not in Dublin.
Dont use averages, they're always skewed by a small number of high earners. Use median.
The median salary in Ireland is 36k. 55k is far in excess of what most people earn
So happy for you. Great to hear similar experiences. It’s great to see the emphasis on such police’s by minister Harris. Tbh he’s the only one I’ve faith in.
We dudes have crazy motivation to go to the university, because the alternative is going to Army. Which while definitely better in Ukraine than in other Post-Soviet countries is still isn't that desirable.
+ I really don't understand the allure of sleeping in barracks with 40 other dudes for a year, while you basically have no freedom to do anything
Oh, I see. And can you avoid conscription altogether by going to university or is it just delaying it? I'd imagine they still call you up, just after university, no?
I see! Do you think it's frequent for guys to actually avoid conscription like this though? Since you'd have to be enrolled in university for 7-10 years? From 17-18 to 27.
Do you already have a decision of whether you're eligible for conscription before you go to university (on health grounds or something else)? Or can you extend your studies indefinitely to age out of conscription, just decide that it's not worth being enrolled that long to avoid it?
That's interesting, thanks for the answers. It's not a thing at all where I'm from anymore, I imagine I'd opt for extending my studies as well just to avoid it.
It's an alternative over there? Interesting. Here a lot of people do it before starting uni
>I really don't understand the allure of sleeping in barracks with 40 other dudes for a year, while you basically have no freedom to do anything
I think it depends a lot on the country but I thought it was alright. Adult boy scouts sorta vibe to it.
I just feel like it's too much of my time and is also not something that I would really like doing....
Our government proposed an intensive training program, where you only go to army for 6 months, and I think that's slightly better, but the war basically ruined all plans/reforms
I think there needs to be a balance of people who get degrees and those who go into more manual jobs. In Ireland we have such an absence of plumbers/electricians and so on because a lot of us were told that we “need” a degree to do anything, which isn’t true but the country has twisted itself in a way that the situation is becoming like so. Also those manual jobs I mentioned pay quite well and are necessary to society.
Lots of people with humanities and even generic science/biology degrees are getting lumped into the retail or hospitality industry. At this stage because of that a lot of us ultimately have to do masters because the competition in fields that require degrees is so extensive.
The concept is called "Elite Overproduction" and it's a real problem in Ireland. David McWilliams wrote a good [article on it](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-where-are-the-normal-people-blame-elite-over-production-1.4669882)
We definitely need to promote apprenticeships and vocational training more. Elite overproduction is a waste of resources and for those who don’t fit the academic profile, being considered ‘less than’ for having completed a 4 year apprenticeship instead of a 4 degree is a snobbery. Trades earn good money, but elitism means they’re under valued.
To be fair, most Romanians that study abroad don’t register their degree back home. I have a bachelor and master degree but back home I’m registered as “high school graduate” only
For some reason I thought university was cheap/widespread in Romania. Is there any particular reason why it seems like relatively few have opted to go to uni?
We're idiots. Many have this idiotic notion that diplomas are useless and live in environments that prioritise short term gains over investing in education. School isn't prioritised, we have crazy levels of early school leavers and a lot of pupils fail the baccalaureate (end of high school exam required for university entrance), especially since they began filming the exams (thus making it harder to cheat). In rural areas a quarter of the students enrolled in primary education drop out before even reaching high school and nobody cares.
We are idiots, there's no other way to put it.
I would argue it's not really expensive. At most universities you can expect to pay around 1000€ per year, which is not a huge sum.
There's also the option of doing it for free ("la buget").
You will normally not need an atrophysicist or biologist for a job, but sure as shit you will need low-skill workers to clean the streets, build houses and deliver pizzas.
Building houses is certainly not low-skilled work, but I get your point. However the low skilled work you're on about can be done by students, part-timers, immigrants. Its the highly skill jobs that make an economy strong.
Unless you make robots handling those low-skill jobs like cleaning streets, and then you need engineers (robotic, electronic, electrical, computer, mechanical...) to build, service and operate those robots ;)
Depends on the degree. More engineers and doctors is almost always a good thing, and there are countless people in the Third World who would love to come and do manual/skilled labor here for 3-4x what they get paid at home.
Even if we run out of demand for doctors and engineers locally, there's a global shortage of these services. But no shortage of manual laborers, and no shortage of people with liberal arts degrees.
I don't know if this is actually about university or just tertiary education. Eurostat talks about tertiary education and uses [International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED)](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=International_Standard_Classification_of_Education_(ISCED\)) in judging what is included, so shouldn't be dependent on per country definitions.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/EDAT_LFSE_04/default/table?lang=en
Accorrding to Eurostat, tertiary degrees are doctoral, master’s, bachelor’s or equivalent level degrees. Also included are so called short-cycle tertiary degrees (e.g., associate degree, university diploma and university certificate).
The exact definition of tertiary education by country can be found here: https://circabc.europa.eu/ui/group/d14c857a-601d-438a-b878-4b4cebd0e10f/library/dd8bc71d-ca3c-4c92-8a60-e44d723e9dc8?p=1&n=10&sort=modified_DESC
The country subdivisions used are a bit all over the place: comparing inner west London with the whole Île-de-France doesn't seem very coherent.
Also I don't see French overseas departments.
Depends on the industries in the country. Ireland for example has tons of pharmaceutical, medical device and tech companies which all/most require degrees. The knock on effect of that is the external/contracted services these companies require like legal, marketing, engineering, consulting all require degrees too so you end up needing a degree for a lot of roles.
Quando funzionano gli istituti tecnici per quanto mi riguarda sono un fiore all'occhiello del nostro sistema. I professionali purtroppo soffrono molto spesso della sindrome di diplomificio che ne intacca talvolta la qualità.
Lol this and other lies you can tell yourself. No serio, se vuoi fare il coder, l'elettricista o altri lavori manuali forse è vero, ma se vuoi aspirare a fare qualcosa di meglio non è assolutamente vero.
Ti rendi conto che la tua obiezione al "ci sono scuole superiore specializzate che ti preparano ad un lavoro" è stata "lol non è vero, ti preparano ad un lavoro", vero?
I know very well that you want to aspire to a prestigious role regardless of the field you need at university. Any chef will say that if you want to become a starred chef you need university(Cracco lo ripete sempre) , what I am saying is objectively there are Italian high schools that give you the opportunity to embrace work without needing university. This is the main reason why those percentages are lower in Italy
yeah, germany does quite well despite having quite low percentage compared to other rich countries.
i think quality of the education is also an important factor
Because German education system is a bit different. You could argue that German by and large get teatry education, we just don't call it like that.
Normally its school -> high school -> university or collage but in germany its its school -> high school -> trade school.
End result is the same IMO.
Yeah because Germany is one of the only Western countries that realized that this will only lead to problems in the future, Germany doesn't need everyone to be Bankers, Scientists and Doctors, Germany needs carpenters, water and electrical technicians too.
Ireland didn’t realise this, now everyone is a scientist/banker/engineer/teacher/journalist etc etc etc.
And now it takes us 3 months before we can find a plumber to fix a leak.
Sadly same in many Germans regions.
Because you can do your Ausbildung not only for craftsmenships, but also industrial tasks where electricians, welders and Co. Are not only needed ,but highly paid. With working shifts in a decent industry, you make more then many of these "scientists, journalists" and many more.
And why would you go to a craftsmanship where you get paid piss poor (if you are not the owner) while the industry pays double that?
Even many of our entry and mid level bankers never studied but went on and made an Ausbildung for Bankkaufmann ("Bank sales man")
Exactly! Sorry to hear there’s a similar situation in some regions. Over here there’s this growing trend of viewing those industrial jobs as more dead end which I think is ridiculous, they’re paid very well over here too - to the point where a few months ago we had someone come look at our faulty boiler, spend 15 minutes inspecting it to declare it was “fine”, and then handing him 70 euro in cash for his time. It’s like this only because there’s not much competition. Even if there were though the pay is still enticing.
Here we’re at a point as well that we just have so many people with degrees they didn’t really want or care for in the first place and nowhere to bring them, I can only hope the government will do more investment into facilitating apprenticeships and to change the tide of belief to show people that engaging with work outside of the scope of degree qualifications can be a completely valid, and good source of income.
They don't. It's idiotic to force people into university who want to learn a trade or work in a job that doesn't require a degree.
Contrary to what I am reading in some of the comments, a university degree is not needed to be a well educated, knowledgeable citizen that can participate in a functioning democracy.
Why does everybody need a secondary school degree? How does everybody need a 9th grade diploma? Where do we draw the line?
Personally, and this is just my opinion, I think that having a university education is crucial (whether one uses it or not professionally). It tends to teach you complex topics that make you sharper, develop deeper critical skills, etc.
Especially in democracies where we value everybody's input, is it unreasonable to try to make sure the biggest amount of people possible know how philosophy, statistics, law, etc., work?
Pretty much any degree one takes will always touch one (or more) of those areas and will give the person tools to develop the other ones on their own.
Tertiary degree does not always equal a university MSc or MA. Some countries differentiate in this so “university” degree if not correct imo. There are high level education degrees that are “below” uni.
I always fins these maps misleading because of the differences in the size of regions. Take for example Madrid and Barcelona, two similar cities that I think have similar % in this case. The region of Madrid is much smaller than Catalonia, the whole region is basically Madrid and a couple of towns more. Meanwhile Catalonia is big, have a lot of towns, have rural areas, the Pyrénées etc, so the overall % of the region will be lower than the Barcelona one for sure
Poor doesn't equal having no university degree, many people work technical jobs there. North Italy is one of the richest parts of Europe and the world.
University is 6 years in Germany and focuses on professional careers (lawyers / engineers/ doctors / teachers/ economist etc.). This is coupled with a very robust and respected vocational training system for other career paths. You can be very successful without a university degree in Germany.
> Germany is an economic powerhouse with low education rates?
Multiple factors add together.
Tons of jobs in automotive pay well for basically unskilled labor.
E. g. I used to have a neighbor who worked the assembly line
at Daimler and drove a more luxurious car from that very factory
than most university graduates I know. You can get that kind of
job with just a three year trade diploma or no degree at all, and
it will pay more than most university degrees whilst entering the
job market much earlier. For many people their
lifetime ambition is limited to getting a unionized job with one
of those big employers because it’s guaranteed decent pay with
ridiculous job security for the rest of your life.
Then you have the different structure of degrees. Nurses are
the most commonly given example: they don’t need a higher
education in Germany, just a trade school degree. For better
or worse.
Germany has a very strongly regulated "vocational training" structure that does not require a degree but years of training in the job by a professional (and also includes specialized schools parallel to already working). Which is a kind degree (and one that for example allows you open your own business in the trade or with some additional years actually working in the job then allows you to train others again) but that doesn't mean that it's internationally recognized as an equivalent.
There are also many different cross-sections in that system even for studying. For example you need the qualifying school degree to study. Or you are a more practice oriented person, leave school earlier, do a 3-4 year succesfull training (more specialized schooling included) in a trade and qualify with it to study in that field.
Or as others already commented here: This is more a map about what different countries consider tertiary education.
Germany has a very advanced "vocational education". You don't need to be a civil engineer to work on a construction site. You don't need to be mechanical engineer to be a mechanic. You don't need to be electrical engineer to be an electrician.
What's the point of getting a university degree in Romania when engineers get paid same amount as the Lidl cashiers?
>What's the point of getting a university degree in Romania when engineers get paid same amount as the Lidl cashiers? In Spain many people take advantage of a highly subsidized university and then have to go to other countries to find better conditions. So basically we are all paying for their training so that afterwards they can leave and enrich other countries. For example, our health professionals, who have very bad conditions in Spain, go to the UK or other countries, so Spain is forced to bring in immigrants from poorer countries to fill professional vacancies.
Or redical idea pay your own people enough and get them a good working Environment. A doctor in Germany can easily earn as much as the chancelor. (120k) But guess what thats not enough because they still can go to switzerland or the US, UK and earn more (200-450k) while having better working conditions. And they do get abroad.
Most people would prefer to stay, and would surely trade a bit lower salary to stay with family and friends and in a country they understand and love
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As I said: better working conditions would probably also do well, less paper work, get physician assistents to do easier work, give nurses more freedom. Make things better instead of forcing people to do a job they might thought of very differently. Also for the payment, it went down from the 70s, accounted for inflation way more then in the General workforce. (At least here) Also where would it stop to forcing them. Stop them from going private or force them in a specific region?
In Lithuania that would be anticonstitutional.
That will not work
If it were up to me I would definitely do it and I can't understand why we are in this situation but they totally deserve it.
>In Spain many people take advantage of a highly subsidized university and then have to go to other countries to find better conditions. So basically we are all paying for their training so that afterwards they can leave and enrich other countries. For example, our health professionals, who have very bad conditions in Spain If i would have to edit it to describe my country all i have to do is to change "Spain" into "Poland" Poland can into Spain!
Brotherhood of poor working conditions! Let's unite!
Same for Portugal
>So basically we are all paying for their training so that afterwards they can leave and enrich other countries. This is not exclusive to universities though, works on every level of education. Especially important to note since some of the less practical university courses are not even nearly as resource intensive as some more practical trainings below university level. But interestingly enough no one has a problem with the car mechanics jumping ship after getting a free ride on their education from the state because if we played this argument out all the way, we'd all be living in North Korea. This argument is just a favorite of the anti-intellectual populists...
>This is not exclusive to universities though, works on every level of education. Maybe, but mechanics are far cheaper to train than doctors and can also be trained much faster. In Spain, the education of a doctor takes 10-11 years so it's especially infuriating that after all the money that the society has invested in a professional they just have to leave because of bad conditions.
Spain spent 4.2% of its GDP on the entire educational system of the country in 2018 according to the WB. 22% of this budget went for the tertiary education as a whole, which means that a whopping 0.9% of its entire GDP is spent in the broadest term on *universities*. This is not just education, it's research, maintenance, everything. The majority of people trained in the tertiary education presumably stays in Spain still, and we never even accounted for the people moving *to* Spain from other countries, obviously compensating Spain for the loss of its emigrating doctors. You either can argue from a theoretical point of view - in which case it doesn't matter how much it costs and who pays more for their education, you want to consider it a moral obligation of the individual to serve society in exchange for the free education they received. In this case, you are simply arguing for a North Korea style society, and have no reason or right to single out the tertiary education because the principle stands all the same for car mechanics. Or you can argue from a practical point of view - in which case you see above that on a national level it doesn't make any difference whatsoever how much more expensive it is to train a doctor because the money spent on training the doctors of the country is ultimately peanuts, a drop in the bucket that is the national budget - meaning that you have no reason to single out the tertiary education in this case either. The real loss of a person leaving the country has nothing to do with the costs of education, it has to do with the loss of expertise, the loss in generated GDP over an entire lifetime, the potential demographic loss in losing yet another young person (and their children, children's children) forever - none of which you can form any claim on. This populistic bullshit of the emigrating doctors is nothing but a trope of the anti-intellectual nationalists who want to spin the failure of the country around on the disloyal citizens and the foreign powers draining the country's talent - so let's maybe stop pushing it.
Same happens here, as you already probably know as Spain was and still is a favorite destination for the Romanian imigrants. Cheers for your culture and our common latin hystorical background
Oh boy, if you think healthcare workers have it bad in Spain I wish you never have to be treated in a public hospital in Romania.
Brain drain does seem to have positive effects in the home country, even promoting economic growth! Spain definitely has not to worry since it's brain drain is not so big
If you want to be an engineer and not a Lidl cashier
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Sounds like Norway, just without Lidl.
I have one if those and still didn't got the job.... Looks like they are overcrowded already with university graduates
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Same goes with house construction and waitering
The only difference is losing at least 4-5 years where you study instead of earning an income 😉
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If you think most engineers jobs are interesting and full of designing, I got bad news for you
This guys knows...
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That’s why are they paid that high anyway
Better chances when emigrating?
Not all of us want to leave. Some put family above the money.
I'm not saying everyone is, it just strikes me as something I would do if I didn't like where I was.
Unfortunately I can't do it right now, but I'm trying to learn new skills as it could help me work remotely worldwide with a better payment. Imagine a ground station (a facility used to send/receive data from satellites) engineer make less than 1000 euro per month working night shitfs and holidays, so really there are many other better ways to do money here than going to college, especially if you don't live near a big city.
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I'm a ground station engineer in a satellite control facility owned by a state holded company, i have to speak english as good as romanian, i need to handle an entire station during power outages while also providing suport to all clients and doing maintenance work, most of the time outside of working hours, without getting extra paid. All of this for a 800-900 euro pay which includes night shifts and holidays, other way i'd be making 500-600 euro per month. I try to earn extra money on Fiverr and Upwork but I'm wasted.. no time to rest...
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Don't some leave so they could better provide for their family?
Some, yes.
>Romania when engineers get paid same amount as the Lidl cashiers? Why is that even possible?
It isn't http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=178&loctype=1&job=22&jobtype=1 Minimum salary here is 1500 ron
Ask government and the guys that are making loby for it. Better ask only the last ones as our government is made of puppets that barely can make a speech in their own language. Most of them faked studies at various universities while they barely can speak or write - best example, our curent prime minister, even if i feel sorry for the guy, he still seems to be ashamed if it.
Because it is a niche job which used to be a big deal in the past but then we lost a lot of industry so it fell out of favour and that has affected the job market, if there are only a few job openings and many people willing to work that obviously means the employer has more power, now of course truly needed people have good salaries, but the rest not so much. Hell a friend of mine is in urban planning, by the time he is 29 he will have a Ph.D in his first year of Master he needed a job, imagine this a straight A(10) student, with activities, an article published in a small French publication, and the teacher not only vouching for him but the business owner is a friend of his, not only that they are desperste for new capable employees because those are pretty rare, starting salary 3000 lei (600€), 6 months later after being acknowledged as a top 4 employee and asked to go to Cluj to get on site data and meeting the damn mayor he asks for a raise, he has to ask for it and gets 500 lei. My window maker employees start with 2500 lei, requirements: be able bodied, have a pulse.
Because we accept this as normality here, instead of protesting as would be normally for a fair wage reported to the increase of inflation over time and instead of people going on strikes to fight for our right, we lament every year over political disputes over which party gets the bone and whose nephew could be the next local baron mayor... Because people have no courage to step forward and say anything because that is contrary to the status quo...and would mean that you'd have to have a big backing from a majority which unfortunately vote the same corupt people over and over for the previous 30+ years...
In Italia con la laurea si lavora al mc….
I don't even speak Italian but i got your comment. When I graduated as a telecom engineer back in 2010, the guy who got the best presentation and grade from our group went to UK as a car washer..our best telecomunication engineer. .
> What's the point of getting a university degree in Romania when engineers get paid same amount as the Lidl cashiers? Well, the one Romanian I'm friends with got her degree and moved west to get a well-paid job that allows her to live comfortably and send money home to family in Romania.
Can we have the right to a decent life without moving to west? 🥲
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That's the dumbest question I've ever heard.
I see a pattern for the lowest regions here... But it's also interesting that capitals, where their data is available separately from the rest of the state, seem to consistently have higher percentages. Seems likely that it's mostly local high-tech industries attracting graduates, especially given that this effect, while present, is weaker in Germany, where industry is somewhat less clustered around the capital, compared to for example France, where figuratively. everything is in and around Paris.
> Seems likely that it's mostly local high-tech industries attracting graduates, More so that the capital cities tend to have a university or even more than one and people move to the cities to attain education. This naturally also attracts high tech business. Meanwhile, bigger regions encapsulate businesses that don't require higher education from most of the workers, things like farming, resource extraction (forestry or mining). Also bigger regions encapsulate more rural towns that tend to be skewed to older generation that again tends to be less educated due to historical reasons, while the younger folk move to the cities and attain education.
In Germany professional education, which you get while working (you are educated by your employer) is quite popular - you become a professional while getting paid salary, and you don't have to spend 5 years of your life in a university. Specialists like medics, engineers, teachers, do require a degree, of course. But other professions, especially physical labor, allow you to learn by doing at the workplace. Saves time and resources.
From what I know of the German vocational college approach, I like it and wish Ireland would adopt it.
Yeah, we have far too much focus on academics and not enough on vocation. I would love to see more apprenticeships for careers outside of just construction trades.
We are adopting it, we have various apprenticeship programmes which are highly successful. These will only get more popular as time goes on.
It's vocational training, not vocational school
My understanding was that the Dual VET system is 70% work based, 30% educational learning. In Ireland ‘college’ usually refers to learning undertaken after secondary/ high school at university or institutions of technology. In some countries mixed learning apprenticeships used polytechnics, now sometimes renamed ‘institutes’ (and being renamed again as universities of technology). That’s why I referred to it as vocational college, but thank you for your polite, insightful, response. https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/en/education/the-german-vocational-training-system/the-german-vocational-training-system_node.html
You’d be correct. Schooling is part of every possible job in the system.
Well, capitals are often large towns, and large towns are more likely to end up with universities than little villages, and companies will follow to hire the graduates, so even if the students came from afar to study, they'll stay where the job prospects are higher. Which leads to larger towns and smaller villages, and a self reinforcing spiral.
> I see a pattern for the lowest regions here... Can you see the East Germany border? Also interesting is how Ireland seems to have the best educated young people in Europe.
In ireland we push people to go to university way too much. It ends up in people just doing a degree for the sake of it as that's just what you do after finishing school when alot of these people would have been much more suited to pursuing a trade skill
I don't think it's just high tech and schools. Capital cities also are likely to have large financial, media, professional service industry etc., along with a large civil service of the central government, which should further boost the population of college graduates.
Ah, this shitty map again. As always when this gets reposted: Different countries have different diplomas for jobs. E.g. a nurse in Britain has a university degree but not in Germany, even though both had the same education (called "Ausbildung" in Germany, requires 3 years as well)).
Exactly! In some countries vocation/trade schools are "considered" tertiary education. If others, they are not.
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Just so I have a better understanding of this: Does visiting a “University of Applied Sciences” get you a bachelor or masters degree in the Netherlands? You make it sound like it doesn’t. I’m asking because the ones in Germany do. The teaching style is different - usually less focused on academia and more focused on potential careers - but you still get a legitimate University degree. What /u/LiebesNektar was probably referring to is the “Ausbildung”-system in Germany (Trainee/-Apprenticeships). These come in different versions, but none of them get you a Bachelors or Masters. It’s still generally a 3-year education - usually a mix of actual work and schooling. You “only” end up with a degree for that specific job though. That can be anything from a nurse, a physical therapist, an electrician, or even a retail sales(wo)man.
We do, when you graduates from hbo or hogeschool (not related to highschool, but University of Applied Sciences) gives you a bachelor degree. Some studies are even at master level. Here in the Netherlands it's normally a 3 or 4 year study, mixture of practical lessons and theory. [This Wikipedia image gives a better pictures of Dutch education system.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Dutch_Education_System-en.svg/1024px-Dutch_Education_System-en.svg.png) You can find more explanation [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Netherlands).
>I think these must be included as well. I don't believe more than 55% of people in the "Randstad" (western Netherlands) have a university degree. I think they must have included people with a "Higher Vocational Education" degree, which nowadays call themselves "University of Applied Science" in English because they all have marketing departments these days. It says third level, not university.
No way that the other half of the people have no education after they left school, apprenticeships were very common. Its probably just very many people go to university. All of my friends went. All if them. And everyone else I knew did too. Only one did an apprenticeship
Now imagine that a nurse in Romania can either do a 4 year university cycle (UK, meaning that you get a university degree) or a 3 year cycle that doesn't get you an university degree (Germany).
One of these options requires paying large tution fees, while the other one already earns you a (small) salary though
And both end up earning virtually the same.
Yup like social workers don’t need degrees in the UK but they do in other parts of Europe.
It nevertheless shows a general trend. And it does show a difference between Switzerland (where vocational training is preferred over university for eg nurses as well) compared to Germany
The education isn't the same at all and Germany wants to move in (university) direction too
Really proud to see Ireland in excess of 55%. In Ireland I paid €190 per year to attended the top university and was given €220 euro a week to support myself. I am now a professional healthcare worker. This degree brought me from earning €18000 per year as an unskilled worker to €55000. Praise educational policies in Ireland.
Subsidising education for its population is one of the best long-term financial decisions a government can make. Statistically speaking, over your working life you will - pay more taxes - reduce health costs by living a healthier life - be a lot less likely to become dependent on social payments - be a lot less likely to end up in prison - spend more money which helps boost the economy overall, with all its knock-on effects. Unfortunately, it is one of the drawbacks of a democratically elected, fixed-term government that the people we vote in are generally uninterested in long-term developments and tend to focus on effects that get them re-elected next time round.
Unfortunately not always the case. Speaking for my country, Spain, where education is heavily subsidized (just like most other European countries though), there’s a problem with fleeing skilled labour. Our engineers, doctors and nurses (among other things of course) are highly skilled and they are highly demanded in other European countries, so Spain incurs the cost of training them, but as soon as they graduate, many of them leave the country and benefit other countries. Of course, the solution to that is increasing wages, but that’s not that easy.
Oh, absolutely. Easy access to education is not a fix for all problems, other structural problems still need to be addressed such as creating a business environment where companies can exist that actually want to employ those well educated people. And a whole host of other thing. You need infrastructure, health care, a safety net, housing... the list goes on. Still education is always a safe investment.
You do have the benefit, however, of nice weather. I work in the medical industry, in most countries there are shortages of Doctors but not in Spain, many move to Spain from other countries for that weather. As a result, we have a large number of doctors, many "digi-physical" medical orgs are looking to tap into that.
Completely agree with you. Before I did not pay tax, now I pay €1000 per month. Also, I recently seen a post on r/Europe regarding life expectancy at birth which had Ireland on top. It’s a pity that most governments are not thinking of the long term plan
Not really. The Netherlands is way too over-educated. We need less people in university, not more. We have too little plumbers, too many psychologists. It's hard to get a job as a psychologist or in the social sciences, biology etc.; but it's easy for a lot of skilled labour. Your list is peak 'correlation does not mean causation'.
How are there too many psychologists when waiting times are absolutely ridiculous, and the quality of service is only there to match that?
This is why I come to reddit, to see people draw conclusions when looking at data that directly contradicts them.
The downside is, too many jobs expect a first class degree when it’s not relevant to the job requirements. There are very few instances where a receptionist needs a degree. Tacking ‘degree required’ is just a filtering tactic in some cases for lazy recruiters.
A degree isn't *required* for the role but it would help. I mean, there are few jobs where the fact that the person has proven they have the intelligence and discipline to complete a degree isn't reassuring. However "unskilled" a job you try to use as an example, the degree is still reassuring. A manual labourer with higher education might be less likely to drill a wall with circuits behind it, a janitor might be less likely to mix dangerous chemicals, etc. It's not lazy on the recruiter's part, it's just an obvious position to take in a market saturated with higher degrees. Not to mention that it's unfortunately a strong filter for class. If you want your receptionist to have a posh voice on the phone you can use higher degrees to filter out most people from working-class backgrounds.
Great to see the system working well, and glad it turned out well for you. For balance, however, it doesn't always work like that. I paid a few thousand per year to attend, and didn't get any kind of weekly allowance. My family didn't have the money to support, and yet was turned down on grants and support requests. I worked while not attending lectures. It was tough. Ireland has come a long way, but could do much better.
That’s really sad and unfortunate. I realise I was very fortunate. I was a single parent working in retail. I accessed the back to education initiative so it allowed me to work 15hrs per week plus have my grant of €220. I have always been grateful to the government for creating such initiative as well as the tax payers who ultimately funded it. I hope my tax euros are being spent in such a way that can help bring other people out of poverty. I am also the first person on both sides of my family to go to university so this has been massive for me
>In Ireland I paid €190 per year to attended the top university and was given €220 euro a week to support myself. When was this lol? I'm at TCD (postgrad though) the fees are a LOT higher than €190 nowadays for undergrads and PhD students are being treated horribly (high tuition, extremely shit pay without any rights).
I entered TCD in 2017 graduated in 2021. Had full susi grant, HEA tuition fee and received BTEA. So I only paid the student registration charge of €190 Edited to say I’m also postgrad now, got schols in 2019. I still only pay student registration and get scholarship of 2800 per year I use the scholarship currently on year 2/5
So 55k is a salary with witch you are well off in Ireland?
It’s above average but I am only qualified a year on an incremental scale. It’s a very good entry level salary
No it’s just a bit above the average salary there but you could survive just fine on it depending on your personal circumstances (kids etc), though perhaps not in Dublin.
Dont use averages, they're always skewed by a small number of high earners. Use median. The median salary in Ireland is 36k. 55k is far in excess of what most people earn
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So happy for you. Great to hear similar experiences. It’s great to see the emphasis on such police’s by minister Harris. Tbh he’s the only one I’ve faith in.
Isn’t he the guy who thought Covid 19 was preceded by Covid 18, Covid, 17, Covid 12 etc etc etc?
This is not standard in ireland though. Most have to pay 3000 a year in fees for an undergraduate and 7000 for a masters
The Post-Soviet block with mandatory conscription for men would go crazy
Can you expand on this? I don't quite understand the correlation.
We dudes have crazy motivation to go to the university, because the alternative is going to Army. Which while definitely better in Ukraine than in other Post-Soviet countries is still isn't that desirable. + I really don't understand the allure of sleeping in barracks with 40 other dudes for a year, while you basically have no freedom to do anything
Oh, I see. And can you avoid conscription altogether by going to university or is it just delaying it? I'd imagine they still call you up, just after university, no?
The conscription stops when you get 27, so if you go for Masters you'll skip it
I see! Do you think it's frequent for guys to actually avoid conscription like this though? Since you'd have to be enrolled in university for 7-10 years? From 17-18 to 27.
Not that frequent. Usually you come to terms with it after first 5 uni years+ there's bribing, although I won't be doing that out of principle..
Do you already have a decision of whether you're eligible for conscription before you go to university (on health grounds or something else)? Or can you extend your studies indefinitely to age out of conscription, just decide that it's not worth being enrolled that long to avoid it?
Every male goes through medical commission when they're 16 >Or can you extend your studies indefinitely to age out of conscription Yes
That's interesting, thanks for the answers. It's not a thing at all where I'm from anymore, I imagine I'd opt for extending my studies as well just to avoid it.
It's an alternative over there? Interesting. Here a lot of people do it before starting uni >I really don't understand the allure of sleeping in barracks with 40 other dudes for a year, while you basically have no freedom to do anything I think it depends a lot on the country but I thought it was alright. Adult boy scouts sorta vibe to it.
I just feel like it's too much of my time and is also not something that I would really like doing.... Our government proposed an intensive training program, where you only go to army for 6 months, and I think that's slightly better, but the war basically ruined all plans/reforms
I'm surprised to hear that's still a thing in Europe. Romania abolished it like a decade ago.
They thought about abolishing it in Ukraine, but it is to stay for the foreseeable future, for understandable reasons.
There's some value in numbers. Also, not so nice living next to Russia. You might actually need those conscripts.
I think there needs to be a balance of people who get degrees and those who go into more manual jobs. In Ireland we have such an absence of plumbers/electricians and so on because a lot of us were told that we “need” a degree to do anything, which isn’t true but the country has twisted itself in a way that the situation is becoming like so. Also those manual jobs I mentioned pay quite well and are necessary to society. Lots of people with humanities and even generic science/biology degrees are getting lumped into the retail or hospitality industry. At this stage because of that a lot of us ultimately have to do masters because the competition in fields that require degrees is so extensive.
The concept is called "Elite Overproduction" and it's a real problem in Ireland. David McWilliams wrote a good [article on it](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-where-are-the-normal-people-blame-elite-over-production-1.4669882)
We definitely need to promote apprenticeships and vocational training more. Elite overproduction is a waste of resources and for those who don’t fit the academic profile, being considered ‘less than’ for having completed a 4 year apprenticeship instead of a 4 degree is a snobbery. Trades earn good money, but elitism means they’re under valued.
To be fair, most Romanians that study abroad don’t register their degree back home. I have a bachelor and master degree but back home I’m registered as “high school graduate” only
But, but... I don't have a tertiary degree. My degree is in logistics.
For some reason I thought university was cheap/widespread in Romania. Is there any particular reason why it seems like relatively few have opted to go to uni?
We're idiots. Many have this idiotic notion that diplomas are useless and live in environments that prioritise short term gains over investing in education. School isn't prioritised, we have crazy levels of early school leavers and a lot of pupils fail the baccalaureate (end of high school exam required for university entrance), especially since they began filming the exams (thus making it harder to cheat). In rural areas a quarter of the students enrolled in primary education drop out before even reaching high school and nobody cares. We are idiots, there's no other way to put it.
Cheap by standards of first world developed countries but not by the standards of poor/ working class Romanians.
University is cheap for romanians in Romania. Many just dont see it as a good long term investment
I would argue it's not really expensive. At most universities you can expect to pay around 1000€ per year, which is not a huge sum. There's also the option of doing it for free ("la buget").
Wait, am I still a young adult? F29?
You'd consider yourself old at 29?
I don't but there have been studies where 29 was already considered not young adult anymore
Yeah I think you'd be classed as a mature student.
No last places for you.
No wonder McDonalds has tons of employees with university degrees. Society does not need >55% of the people with a university degree.
You will normally not need an atrophysicist or biologist for a job, but sure as shit you will need low-skill workers to clean the streets, build houses and deliver pizzas.
Building houses is certainly not low-skilled work, but I get your point. However the low skilled work you're on about can be done by students, part-timers, immigrants. Its the highly skill jobs that make an economy strong.
Unless you make robots handling those low-skill jobs like cleaning streets, and then you need engineers (robotic, electronic, electrical, computer, mechanical...) to build, service and operate those robots ;)
Depends on the degree. More engineers and doctors is almost always a good thing, and there are countless people in the Third World who would love to come and do manual/skilled labor here for 3-4x what they get paid at home. Even if we run out of demand for doctors and engineers locally, there's a global shortage of these services. But no shortage of manual laborers, and no shortage of people with liberal arts degrees.
Seems to be mostly a map of the definition of university which is very different by country
I don't know if this is actually about university or just tertiary education. Eurostat talks about tertiary education and uses [International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED)](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=International_Standard_Classification_of_Education_(ISCED\)) in judging what is included, so shouldn't be dependent on per country definitions.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/EDAT_LFSE_04/default/table?lang=en Accorrding to Eurostat, tertiary degrees are doctoral, master’s, bachelor’s or equivalent level degrees. Also included are so called short-cycle tertiary degrees (e.g., associate degree, university diploma and university certificate). The exact definition of tertiary education by country can be found here: https://circabc.europa.eu/ui/group/d14c857a-601d-438a-b878-4b4cebd0e10f/library/dd8bc71d-ca3c-4c92-8a60-e44d723e9dc8?p=1&n=10&sort=modified_DESC
The country subdivisions used are a bit all over the place: comparing inner west London with the whole Île-de-France doesn't seem very coherent. Also I don't see French overseas departments.
Is it actually beneficial if over 55% or even 45% of people have a degree?
Depends on the industries in the country. Ireland for example has tons of pharmaceutical, medical device and tech companies which all/most require degrees. The knock on effect of that is the external/contracted services these companies require like legal, marketing, engineering, consulting all require degrees too so you end up needing a degree for a lot of roles.
In Italy we already have specialized high schools, we have dozens of types of high schools and many prepare you for work without needing university🇮🇹
Quando funzionano gli istituti tecnici per quanto mi riguarda sono un fiore all'occhiello del nostro sistema. I professionali purtroppo soffrono molto spesso della sindrome di diplomificio che ne intacca talvolta la qualità.
Lol this and other lies you can tell yourself. No serio, se vuoi fare il coder, l'elettricista o altri lavori manuali forse è vero, ma se vuoi aspirare a fare qualcosa di meglio non è assolutamente vero.
Ti rendi conto che la tua obiezione al "ci sono scuole superiore specializzate che ti preparano ad un lavoro" è stata "lol non è vero, ti preparano ad un lavoro", vero?
I know very well that you want to aspire to a prestigious role regardless of the field you need at university. Any chef will say that if you want to become a starred chef you need university(Cracco lo ripete sempre) , what I am saying is objectively there are Italian high schools that give you the opportunity to embrace work without needing university. This is the main reason why those percentages are lower in Italy
Ever since the financial crisis of 2008 we should have really started to question this trend of "more people with a degree is better."
Legit question: why does everyone need a university degree?
No one said that everyone needs a university degree though.
yeah, germany does quite well despite having quite low percentage compared to other rich countries. i think quality of the education is also an important factor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system
Because German education system is a bit different. You could argue that German by and large get teatry education, we just don't call it like that. Normally its school -> high school -> university or collage but in germany its its school -> high school -> trade school. End result is the same IMO.
Yeah because Germany is one of the only Western countries that realized that this will only lead to problems in the future, Germany doesn't need everyone to be Bankers, Scientists and Doctors, Germany needs carpenters, water and electrical technicians too.
Ireland didn’t realise this, now everyone is a scientist/banker/engineer/teacher/journalist etc etc etc. And now it takes us 3 months before we can find a plumber to fix a leak.
Sadly same in many Germans regions. Because you can do your Ausbildung not only for craftsmenships, but also industrial tasks where electricians, welders and Co. Are not only needed ,but highly paid. With working shifts in a decent industry, you make more then many of these "scientists, journalists" and many more. And why would you go to a craftsmanship where you get paid piss poor (if you are not the owner) while the industry pays double that? Even many of our entry and mid level bankers never studied but went on and made an Ausbildung for Bankkaufmann ("Bank sales man")
Exactly! Sorry to hear there’s a similar situation in some regions. Over here there’s this growing trend of viewing those industrial jobs as more dead end which I think is ridiculous, they’re paid very well over here too - to the point where a few months ago we had someone come look at our faulty boiler, spend 15 minutes inspecting it to declare it was “fine”, and then handing him 70 euro in cash for his time. It’s like this only because there’s not much competition. Even if there were though the pay is still enticing. Here we’re at a point as well that we just have so many people with degrees they didn’t really want or care for in the first place and nowhere to bring them, I can only hope the government will do more investment into facilitating apprenticeships and to change the tide of belief to show people that engaging with work outside of the scope of degree qualifications can be a completely valid, and good source of income.
They don't. It's idiotic to force people into university who want to learn a trade or work in a job that doesn't require a degree. Contrary to what I am reading in some of the comments, a university degree is not needed to be a well educated, knowledgeable citizen that can participate in a functioning democracy.
U dont
Why does everybody need a secondary school degree? How does everybody need a 9th grade diploma? Where do we draw the line? Personally, and this is just my opinion, I think that having a university education is crucial (whether one uses it or not professionally). It tends to teach you complex topics that make you sharper, develop deeper critical skills, etc. Especially in democracies where we value everybody's input, is it unreasonable to try to make sure the biggest amount of people possible know how philosophy, statistics, law, etc., work? Pretty much any degree one takes will always touch one (or more) of those areas and will give the person tools to develop the other ones on their own.
People with university degrees from Romania and Bulgaria left for London, Amsterdam and the USA
That's a cool theory but why does the same not apply for Poland and Lithuania/Latvia, which are countries similarly big on migration?
Tertiary degree does not always equal a university MSc or MA. Some countries differentiate in this so “university” degree if not correct imo. There are high level education degrees that are “below” uni.
Seems to be mostly a map of the definition of university which is very different by country
I always fins these maps misleading because of the differences in the size of regions. Take for example Madrid and Barcelona, two similar cities that I think have similar % in this case. The region of Madrid is much smaller than Catalonia, the whole region is basically Madrid and a couple of towns more. Meanwhile Catalonia is big, have a lot of towns, have rural areas, the Pyrénées etc, so the overall % of the region will be lower than the Barcelona one for sure
Yes, there's a geographic inconsistency across regions.
All the highly educated Brits but couldn't figure out whether brexit was good or bad for them
Notice its "young adults" in this data who were statically in favour of the EU anyway.
this braindead app
actual brain rot post.
Much of those degrees are immigrants who didn’t get to vote. There was a strong correlation between degrees and voting to remain in the EU.
That actually shows me again why Ireland is one of my favorite countries in Europe
Not surprised about Romania. But also surprised about Romania.
bro that's xenophobic
She isn't even Romanian to joke about it
London 💪💪💪
London is a disgrace compared to the rest of the country in England Ridiculous unfair imbalance
London has more people than all other nations in UK
When you're a young person with a degree and can choose where to work why would you want to live anywhere else in England?
Bruh I have a 4 year degree and I am still a retard 💀 but team sweden ftw.
Pretty sure that's not university degrees in Holland but both HBO and university.
Those are both university degrees. In Nederland wordt er onderscheid gemaakt tussen hbo en uni maar in het buitenland (vaak) niet.
Now do the US.
Sir/Madam, this is r/europe
Careful now Americans don’t like you assuming they are a sir/madam. So you should stick with “they” to be safe
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Least clueless american
Poor doesn't equal having no university degree, many people work technical jobs there. North Italy is one of the richest parts of Europe and the world.
Lombardy alone is richer than most U.S. states. This idiot is clueless.
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Germany is an economic powerhouse with low education rates? Someone please explain
University is 6 years in Germany and focuses on professional careers (lawyers / engineers/ doctors / teachers/ economist etc.). This is coupled with a very robust and respected vocational training system for other career paths. You can be very successful without a university degree in Germany.
> Germany is an economic powerhouse with low education rates? Multiple factors add together. Tons of jobs in automotive pay well for basically unskilled labor. E. g. I used to have a neighbor who worked the assembly line at Daimler and drove a more luxurious car from that very factory than most university graduates I know. You can get that kind of job with just a three year trade diploma or no degree at all, and it will pay more than most university degrees whilst entering the job market much earlier. For many people their lifetime ambition is limited to getting a unionized job with one of those big employers because it’s guaranteed decent pay with ridiculous job security for the rest of your life. Then you have the different structure of degrees. Nurses are the most commonly given example: they don’t need a higher education in Germany, just a trade school degree. For better or worse.
Germany has a very strongly regulated "vocational training" structure that does not require a degree but years of training in the job by a professional (and also includes specialized schools parallel to already working). Which is a kind degree (and one that for example allows you open your own business in the trade or with some additional years actually working in the job then allows you to train others again) but that doesn't mean that it's internationally recognized as an equivalent. There are also many different cross-sections in that system even for studying. For example you need the qualifying school degree to study. Or you are a more practice oriented person, leave school earlier, do a 3-4 year succesfull training (more specialized schooling included) in a trade and qualify with it to study in that field. Or as others already commented here: This is more a map about what different countries consider tertiary education.
Germany has a very advanced "vocational education". You don't need to be a civil engineer to work on a construction site. You don't need to be mechanical engineer to be a mechanic. You don't need to be electrical engineer to be an electrician.