Cyprus has among the lowest EU percentages for further education graduates in health, maths and ICT but scored high in education and women studying for a Master’s degree (60%), according to recent European data.
It is estimated that approximately 4.7 million students graduated from tertiary education establishments in the European Union in 2016.
More than one third (34%) of these students graduated in social sciences, journalism, information, business, administration or law.
Other fields of study with sizeable proportions of graduates in 2016 were engineering, manufacturing and construction (15% of graduates), health and welfare (14 %), arts and humanities (11%), natural sciences, mathematics, statistics and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (11%) and education (9%).
When compared with the EU average, some EU Member States had a particularly large or a particularly small share of tertiary education graduates in these different fields of study:
Social sciences, journalism, information, business and law
The share of graduates was relatively low in Finland and Spain, where they accounted for just over one quarter of all graduates in 2016, while much higher shares were registered in Luxembourg (52% of all graduates) and Bulgaria (49 %).
Engineering, manufacturing and construction
There was a relatively low share of graduates in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malta and the United Kingdom (all below 10%) compared with the relatively high shares recorded in Austria (20%), Portugal (21%) and Germany (22%).
Health and welfare
The share of graduates in health and welfare was below 8% in Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria and Cyprus, and highest in Finland and Denmark (both 20%), Sweden (22%) and Belgium (27%).
Arts and humanities
In arts and humanities, the share of graduates at tertiary level was below 8% in Latvia, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria and Sweden, and above 14% in the UK (15%) and Italy (16%).
Natural sciences, mathematics, statistics, and ICT
In Belgium, Cyprus, Lithuania and Bulgaria the share of graduates was under 7%, and was highest in Germany (14%), Ireland (15%) and the UK (17%).
Education
The proportion of graduates in the field of education was below 5% in Italy, France and Romania, and above 16% in Spain, Hungary, Cyprus (all 17%) and Malta (18%).
Women graduates
Within the EU-28, close to three fifths (57.6 %) of all graduates in 2016 were women.
An analysis by programme orientation in the EU-28 reveals that this share was somewhat higher (60.7%) for social sciences, journalism, information, business, administration and law, rose to more than two thirds for arts and humanities (66.9 %), was close to three quarters for health and welfare (73.9%) and peaked at more than four fifths (80.4%) for education.
Male graduates accounted for close to three fifths (57.5 %) of the total number of graduates for natural sciences, mathematics, statistics, and information and communication technologies, and close to three quarters (72.3 %) of the total for engineering, manufacturing and construction-related fields.
In the two smaller fields — agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary fields, and services — the number of graduates was almost balanced between men and women.
Among students studying for Master’s degrees, women were in the majority in all of the EU Member States.
The highest female shares were recorded in the Baltic Member States, Poland, Cyprus, Slovenia, Croatia and Slovakia, where women accounted for more than 60% of the total number of students studying for a Master’s degree.
Tertiary education is defined as the level of education following secondary schooling and is provided by universities and other higher education institutions.
