Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –
Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –
© Higher School of Economics
What place do graduates of technical fields of education occupy in the labour market? What salary can a young engineer expect? To what extent does his success in the labour market depend on the field of study, are all young engineers equally in demand in the labour market? In which regions is there a greater demand for graduates? The answers to these and other questions are provided by a study by HSE scientists, presented at the round table “Graduates of Engineering Specialties in the Russian Labour Market: Myths and Reality” within the framework of XXV Yasinsky (April) International Scientific Conference.
The report was given by the Vice-Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Head of the Labor Market Research Laboratory Sergey Roshchin. He noted that today the labor market in Russia is in a situation of demographic compression and that this situation will persist in the long term. At the same time, the national priorities in the field of technological leadership already defined by the country’s leadership impose additional requirements for the training of specialists who could ensure such leadership. Therefore, the characteristics of the labor market for graduates of engineering training areas and the level of young engineers represented in this market are of particular interest and importance.
As Sergey Roshchin noted in his report, engineering and technical sciences are the most widespread group of graduates. In total, from 2018 to 2024, 27.9% of all graduates were enrolled in higher education programs (bachelor’s, specialist, master’s) in the field of engineering, technology and technical sciences. This is more than in other areas of higher education. But it is not only the number of specialists being trained that is important, but also their quality. If we divide universities that train engineering personnel by the quality of training based on the average Unified State Exam score required for admission to programs at these universities, then 50% of engineering graduates graduate from low-selective programs and universities where 59 or fewer Unified State Exam scores are enough for admission, and this largely determines the quality of engineers we have at the end. “And only 40% of the training of engineers can we consider as sufficiently high-quality, taking into account who comes [to study] and what quality is provided by certain universities,” Sergey Roshchin explained.
An interesting phenomenon has emerged in the training of engineers: students who studied on fee-paying places receive, on average, a higher starting salary than graduates who studied on budget places. This is explained by the fact that studying at a selective university provides its graduates with a high level of income: the salary of graduates of the most selective universities is almost 2 times higher than the salary of those who graduated from the least selective universities.
And families are ready to pay for quality education in more selective universities. Only 10% of fee-paying places are concentrated in the low-selectivity group of universities, while 20% are concentrated in the most selective group. It is not important what type of funding a student receives – fee-paying or state-funded, but what university he or she attends in terms of the quality of training.
“The most important criterion is the form of study: part-time or full-time. Oddly enough, engineering training in the form of part-time study is represented by a solid number. A third of those who graduate are part-time students,” says Sergey Roshchin. Having cited precise statistics on different areas of training, form (full-time and part-time), as well as the level of study (bachelor’s and master’s degrees), he drew attention to the fact that the prospects in the labor market for graduates of full-time and part-time forms of study are different. “Part-time students enter the labor market with starting salaries slightly higher than those of full-time students, but then they remain stagnant. Already in the horizon of two to five years, full-time students are ahead in terms of salary growth, in terms of promotion to more in-demand jobs, and part-time students remain where they were,” the vice-rector explained.
Another observation was that more than half of engineering graduates are concentrated in three key industries: manufacturing; information and communications; and scientific and technical activities. Among the industries with the highest salary levels are mining, information and communications, finance, and insurance.
The most alarming fact, according to Sergey Roshchin, is that 41% of bachelor’s degree graduates and 20% of master’s degree graduates are employed in jobs that do not require higher education according to the OKZ (All-Russian Classifier of Occupations) classification. “In essence, higher education is only needed to occupy positions such as manager and top-level specialist,” the vice-rector comments. “In lower positions, higher education is usually not required. And this is a big question, how the market sees engineering education, whether there is really a need for so many engineers with higher education. Or, perhaps, it is the quality of higher education that does not allow one to occupy positions corresponding to this level.”
Sergey Roshchin also touched upon the topic of regional differentiation. “In general, from all our previous works, reports, and analyses, we know that graduates are very mobile,” he notes. “40% of graduates who have received higher education move to another region.” The most popular for moving were Moscow (29%), Moscow Region (10%), St. Petersburg (8%), KhMAO (5%), and Krasnodar Krai (3%). At the same time, the average salary of those who left the region of study is 110.8 thousand rubles, and those who remained in the region of study – 90.4 thousand rubles. But for the interaction of engineering education and the labor market from a regional point of view, something else is important. The main (45%) training of engineers is conducted in six regions: Moscow, St. Petersburg, the republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, Sverdlovsk and Rostov Regions. And these same territories are the main consumers of engineering personnel. In the labor market of engineers, there is a regional balance of labor and education markets in the main core of training. At the same time, of course, if we consider individual regions and areas of training, certain disproportions exist.
The report allows us to conclude that there are areas of absolute inefficiency in the training of engineers. These are areas such as technosphere safety, light industry technologies, and food technologies. Graduates of these areas look like outsiders in the labor market compared to other engineers.
In conclusion, Sergei Roshchin noted “that the answers to technological challenges associated with the tasks of ensuring technological leadership probably lie not in increasing the number (including through government procurement), but in changing the structure and quality of training engineers.”
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