Germany has never had so many students as it does today. And that is why many of them are asking themselves whether a university degree is really a guarantee of a secure job and a good income.
In all honesty, Kandil Uluc thought she had no need to worry. A Bachelor's degree in business administration in the bag, an acceptable average grade of 2.3 (on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is outstanding and 5 is a fail), highly motivated … what could go wrong? And especially in a field like business administration, which does not have the reputation of producing penniless graduates in the same way as, say, a classics degree.
And especially in times like these, when all the media outlets are reporting that companies are crying out for good staff. Jobs market, here I come! But the call-backs have not been forthcoming. Kandil, 30, has submitted more than a hundred applications since she graduated; all in vain. She has moved back in with her parents to save on rent. And now she is asking herself: was her degree even worth it?
One thing is for sure: more people are studying in Germany right now than ever before, almost three million of them. Half a million new students are expected to enrol this winter semester alone.
Until now, a university degree was seen as the silver bullet for getting a good job; it was a promise of a good income, status, social mobility – of a materially secure life, broadly speaking at least.
Only a minority expect to come up against real difficulties in finding a job, as evidenced by the "Student Survey" conducted regularly by researchers at the University of Konstanz on behalf of the federal government. But at the same time, the desire for stable employment has risen sharply.
The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) even predicts there will soon be more graduates looking for a job than entering retirement. The researchers calculate that 6.5 million new university graduates will have entered the labour market by 2035. However, only 3.9 million employees with a degree from a university or a university of applied sciences will retire from work over the same period.
In future, companies may stop seeking out engineering, business administration and chemistry graduates quite so urgently, instead turning to those with vocational education and training, such as mechatronics engineers or commercial clerks. Nursing professionals are already in short supply.
So the question is this: has a degree really lost its value?
The answer? It’s complicated.
First the good news: last year, companies registered 193,000 job offers for university graduates with the Federal Employment Agency. According to the statistics, those who have completed a degree do not have to spend long looking for a job: 73 per cent of unemployed university graduates found a position in under six months. The unemployment rate for graduates in 2016 was 2.6 per cent – a figure which economists see as consistent with full employment. Even if the economy is not exactly running at full speed at the minute, university graduates still have a very low risk of being jobless: since German reunification, the unemployment rate amongst graduates has never risen above four per cent. And this is despite more and more people studying for degrees.
So it sounds as if graduates like Kandil really should not exist; as if she is some strange anomaly. But this is where it gets complicated: Kandil, and many others who find themselves in a similar situation, are not even included in the unemployment statistics.
Officially, Kandil makes up part of that full graduate employment figure. As the job search became tough, she fell back on an old job from her university days: for two years now, she has manned the bureau de change at Dusseldorf Airport, changing euros into dollars and zloty into euros for business travellers rushing to Departures, sometimes from 5 a.m. until noon, other times from noon until 9 p.m., 40 hours a week. It is an emergency measure; she tells us that some of her colleagues on the counter do not have any education, whilst some have studied – just like her. A colleague with a Bachelor's degree and small children says he could not spend forever trying to find the right job for his qualification; he needs the money.
This is by no means an unusual situation: one third of university graduates in Germany have a job that does not fit their degree. Economist Christina Boll, who conducts research into overqualified workers at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics, is the one who arrived at this figure. The proportion may be higher or lower, depending on the definition. But one thing always remains clear: university graduates run a far greater risk of having to undervalue themselves on the labour market than people with a general school leaving certificate. Researchers from the BIBB predict that this trend could continue.
The supposedly good job market figures for university graduates always have a flip side: those who do not find a job must feel the disappointment particularly keenly. And the feeling of failure hurts all the more.
The supply and demand of university graduates is not the only complicated part of this story. At first glance, graduate income has remained stable – despite the rise in the number of degree holders. According to calculations by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), a university graduate will earn, on average, €1.08 million more over their lifetime than a worker with no school leaving qualification. The OECD even points out that the pay gap between graduates and non-graduates in Germany has widened in recent years.
But that too is just one side of the story. The IAB researchers compared earnings for graduates and those with vocational qualifications in various fields of work. For example, someone doing a mechatronics or electrical engineering apprenticeship will earn €1.6 million over their lifetime, according to the IAB. University graduates working in tourism and the hospitality industry, on the other hand, will have to make do with an average of €1.3 million. IT workers with "just" vocational education and training under their belts can expect lifetime earnings of €2.2 million – significantly more than many professions that require a degree.
At the end of the day, other factors often count for more: the sector, the region, the company, the good luck that your particular aptitudes and interests are currently in demand on the jobs market. Is that fair? If today's students were to speak up for anything, perhaps more equality in the world of work would be a good place to start. If wages and opportunities cease to drift so far apart, then no one will have to ask themselves the question playing on graduate Kandil's mind: is university worth the bother?
Once that is no longer an issue, then students simply get on with the task at hand: studying.