Employability and professional insertion of postgraduate training in the Spanish University System

Abstract

The European Higher Education Area sets up a new structure of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees to enable compatibility and comparability, with an emphasis on mobility, employability and quality assurance. The aim of this work is to analyze the gender differences in the labor insertion of graduates of master’s and doctoral degrees and one year and four years after completion of studies based on Spanish University System Data and Figures Report (MECD, 2016) and from a descriptive comparative and bivariate inferential approach. The results indicate that Spain is the second country with a higher unemployment rate among graduate Masters and has the highest unemployment rate among PhD graduates in the countries analyzed. There are no gender differences in the affiliation rates, even being in many cases more favorable for women. However, the gender gap increases to the detriment of women in indicators more related to the employment quality, such as work according to the educational level and the contribution basis. Although many factors may give rise to these results, it is clear that it remains a challenge to promote public policies for equal opportunities for graduates of the postgraduate training.