April 16, 2019, 01:14 / Opinions

Work not according to degree

Every second Russian does not work in a specialty acquired at a university or technical school - but diplomas of doctors and teachers are becoming increasingly in demand

Pavel Aptekar

The millions of people working outside of the professions they received at higher and secondary educational institutions symbolize not only the excessive specialization of education in Russia, but also the changes in the structure of the economy that have occurred in recent decades. It is unlikely that it will be possible to completely adjust the education system to the frequently changing labor market, but the situation can be improved by teaching more universal competencies.

As follows from the results of an April survey by VTsIOM, approximately half of Russians work in the specialty acquired during training. 28% have never worked in the profession they received at a university, technical school or vocational school. There is a clear connection between work in their specialty and level of education: among respondents with higher education, 58% work in their specialty, 23% have never worked in their graduate specialty.

The high proportion of people working outside their specialty, especially among workers and mid-level specialists, is largely due to the economic transformation of the 1990s, when the demand for many previously common professions sharply decreased. In recent years, the labor market has stabilized, but the difference in employment of university graduates and former vocational schools remains. According to the Rosstat labor force survey (77,000 people, 2018), 71% of Russians who graduated from universities in 2015–2017, 60% of technical school graduates and 55% of college and vocational school graduates worked in their specialty. More often than others, university graduates who received diplomas with specialization in medicine, creative professions and chemistry worked in their specialty (96, 88 and 86%, respectively). Among those studying political science, agriculture, and light industrial technology, a minority worked in their specialty (39, 42, and 47%, respectively). There is also a significant dispersion among graduates of secondary specialized and secondary vocational educational institutions.

The dynamics of individual professions are also interesting. The share of graduates of pedagogical universities working in their specialty in 2013–2017, according to Rosstat, increased from 70 to 81%, and those who graduated from universities with a specialty in information security, on the contrary, decreased from 89 to 78%, graduates with diplomas in construction - from 71 to 65%. The increase in the share of teachers working in the profession is partly explained by an increase in teacher salaries after the May decrees and a decrease in employment in the private sector. At the same time, the share of medical graduates working in their specialty was and remains high – 96%.

It is hardly possible to achieve full compliance of the palette of educational specialties at all levels with the requirements of the labor market: the return of distribution in market conditions looks like an anachronism, and the structure of the economy in 5–10 years is increasingly difficult to predict. The discrepancy can be compensated for by the abandonment of some overly narrow specializations in favor of broader competencies and learning skills, which will allow, at the right time, to improve qualifications and find a job that closely matches the acquired profession.