A new secondary school website will help students decide which university to apply to and which study programme to choose. It is to publish various data, such as information on the average salaries of a particular university's graduates and about their success in finding work after completing their education. "The market will clean up step by step, and companies are going to focus more on the quality of graduates and where they get graduates from", said the Education Minister Juraj Draxler. Last month for the first time in Slovakia's history a company published a job offer online which gave concrete names of universities whose graduates should not bother to apply.
The data that will be published on the website will be provided by state insurer Sociálna poisťovňa and from the Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (CTVI) according to research involving more than 15,000 people with master's degrees gained from full-time study. The analysis of the data from Sociálna poisťovňa has shown that there are profound differences in average salaries, extending up to €1,000 per month. Graduates from faculties focused on informatics and electronics earn the highest amounts and have an almost 100-percent chance of finding work in their field of study. Considerably less money is made by graduates of social sciences and the humanities. According to available data almost half of graduates have never worked in their field of study, and only 35 percent have been working solely in their field of study since completing university education. The number of students for whom the market doesn't provide opportunities has been on the rise. Moreover, as many as 20 percent of graduates didn't need a diploma for their current job.
The site is due to be officially launched on Thursday, February 12.
