Every year, the AlmaLaurea Interuniversity Consortium carries out two annual census surveys on the profile and employment status of graduates in Italy 1, 3 and 5 years after graduation.

The 23rd AlmaLaurea Survey on the 2020 Graduates’ Profile examined around 300,000 graduates from 76 Italian universities with the aim of assessing the study profile and performance of graduates in Italy. Moreover, the 23rd AlmaLaurea Survey on the Occupational Condition of Graduates involved around 655,000 graduates from 76 Italian universities contacted at 1, 3 and 5 years after graduation.

With the 23rd survey on the 2020 Graduates’ Profile (2021 AlmaLaurea Report), AlmaLaurea provided its “contribution to the implementation of the objectives of the Next Generation EU and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan in the tertiary education sphere, as well as to the definition of a European system of graduate tracking in the medium-long term”. Contextually, it presents the research carried out on the “characteristics of the flow of human capital leaving the Italian university system in 2020” based on the experiences of 290,772 graduates that year. These graduates came from 76 Italian universities and the majority of them managed to complete their studies within the “prescribed degree completion time”, in part thanks to the extension of the academic year granted during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The pandemic crisis had evere and lasting consequences on many aspects of the whole “university experience” and the students’ lives after graduation (e.g. the willingness to work remotely increased by 31.7% especially due to the pandemic), although it did not have the time to affect fully the 2020 graduates and their academic performances. The responses to the Profile survey highlighted that graduates who completed their studies by the end of December 2020 and through the pandemic’s phases showed in fact quite small differences compared to those who completed the survey before the Covid-19 crisis. For this reason, it will be important to monitor carefully the graduates’ trends in the coming years, once the actual effects of the pandemic will have had the time to manifest themselves more fully.

The number of study experiences abroad recognised by the course of study, mainly through the Erasmus+ programme, showed a tendency to increase, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and the emergency measures put in place (including travel restrictions). A similar trend can be found in relation to curricular internships carried out abroad. Among the 2020 graduates in Italy, 12.5% were, in fact, involved in study experiences abroad. A large majority of experiences (9.1%) were gained through European Union funded programmes, with Erasmus+ being the most popular programme. Experiences gained abroad on a personal initiative and not recognised by the course of study decreased and accounted for only 1.2%.

Two-year masters and single-cycle second-level graduates appeared to study abroad more frequently than first-level graduates did, 16.4%, 17.8% and 9.4% respectively.

When combining the study periods abroad promoted by the EU funded programmes and other external programmes, the percentage of students having gained such an experience increases to 11.3%, a 2.6 percentage point increase since 2010.

Overall, and according to the survey responses, it appears that mobile graduates are more likely to be employed compared to their non-mobile counterparts: there is a 14.4% higher chance to be employed within one year from graduation for graduates who had an experience abroad recognised by the course of study and 10.3% higher chance for graduates who gained an experience abroad on a personal initiative .

Among the other benefits that derive from a study experience abroad, it is certainly worth mentioning the acquisition of greater linguistic skills: 89.8% of mobile graduates with a recognised study abroad period know at least one foreign language (at a level equal to or higher than B2 in writing), compared to 56.7% of their non-mobile counterparts.

A 2017 study on AlmaLaurea data highlights that study abroad experiences during a university career increase the chances of becoming proficient in either French or Spanish by 24-28 percentage points. The case scenario for German is different, with a magnitude between 5 and 14 percentage points. Even more curious is the English case, which shows rather unstable coefficients ranging between 19 and 49 percentage points. In this regard, two main drivers can explain such different effects: on the one hand the number of bilateral agreements with destination countries, and, on the other hand, the linguistic distance between the mother tongue in the home country and the destination country’s language(s). Despite these factors, and when analysing the heterogeneity of language proficiency, it is important to take into account the demand-supply mechanisms of the labour market which might reinforce one language over another. The report claims that Spanish is not recognised by the labour market as a relevant asset and even though English and French display moderate levels of wage premium, German speakers earn between 8 and 11 percentage points more than their peers. As clearly depicted by the report, studying abroad is crucial in the accumulation of permanent skills like foreign language acquisition, although the overall effect might vary across languages. In conclusion, two major findings can be deducted: it is naturally easier to gain proficiency levels when languages are close between each other, and yet the market tends to reward more hard-to-obtain assets with a wage premium. In light of these results, the author suggests initiating a revision of the actual structure of the programme, aiming for a more homogeneous distribution of offered places.

• 23rd Report 2021 on Graduates’ Profile
• 23rd Report 2021 on Graduates’ employment condition
• 2017 Report on the Profile and Employment Condition of Graduates
• Giuseppe Sorrenti, “The Spanish or the German apartment? Study abroad and the acquisition of permanent skills”, Economics of Education Review, Vol. 60, 2017