The number of graduates fell by 34% in ten years

2024-06-05 07:24:00, Sociale CNA

The number of graduates fell by 34% in ten years

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These days, high school graduates are undergoing final exams in the mandatory pre-university cycle studies, but official data from the Ministry of Education show that their number has dropped by 34% over the last 10 years.

In 2014, 42,318 students participated in the matura exams, while this year, about 28,000 graduates, 14,000 less or -34%.

The number of graduates this year turns out to have been reduced by 7% compared to 2023. The reduction of young graduates means fewer students in the country's universities in the future. Many branches, especially those of teaching, are in danger of being closed.

Last year, about 22,000 high school graduates were enrolled in the university, out of about 30,000 in total, as the figures suggest that this September, the number of young people going to the auditoriums will be even lower.

On the other hand, the labor market is suffering from a shortage of employees and skills in all sectors. The reduction of the workforce and the drop in teaching quality (PISA 2022 test) are expected to make the situation even more difficult, as businesses and the government are committed to filling the shortages with foreign workers.

Demographic developments announce that during the next decade the decline in the number of graduates and students will deepen.

Declining births, immigration concentrated at young ages, is expected to bring the total number of students enrolling in the first year no more than 10 thousand in 2032 and no more than 50-60 thousand students in total in universities, from about 120 thousand that were in the academic year 2022-2023.

Experts suggest that this trend should not be considered a challenge, but a chance to increase the quality of studies in universities and to return to them the functions that belong to them in knowledge and engagement in science.

Demographic and technological developments indicate that in the coming decades, the ICT and health sectors will be the major providers of jobs worldwide. This tendency is also being noticed in Albanian universities, where in recent years there is a better approach to selection.

At the University of Tirana, the study program that had the most interest was informatics with Finance, Economic Informatics and Law that almost exhausted the quotas in the first round, while the branches that had the least interest were foreign languages, where in the first round only over 90 percent of free quotas.

Also, branches such as political science, physics, history, language-literature, archeology, biology, philosophy had over 70-80 percent of free quotas in the first round./ CNA