18. How many young people obtain a VET qualification at tertiary level?

The EU aims to have a highly skilled and qualified population and labour force. Increasing the EU average share of 30 to 34 years-olds with education attainment at tertiary level and maximising the contribution of vocational education to this end, are key policy objectives. The indicator below is defined as the number of short-cycle VET graduates in a specific year, expressed as a percentage of all first-time tertiary education graduates in that year. This taken as a proxy measure for the contribution of VET to tertiary level education attainment among the young. For this indicator, graduates from short cycle VET programmes are defined as graduates from programmes categorised as 554 in ISCED 2011; first time tertiary education graduates are defined as graduates from programmes assigned to the following categories in ISCED 2011: 544, 554; 645, 655, 665; 646, 656, 666; 746, 756 or 766. Estimates of EU averages use available country data. 

Short-cycle VET graduates as % of first-time tertiary level graduates

Source: Cedefop calculations based on Eurostat data, UOE data collection on formal education systems.

Key points

In 2020, in the EU, 16.3% of first-time tertiary education graduates were short-cycle VET graduates. There was substantial variation in this percentage across the EU, ranging from values over 33% (43.5% in Austria, 38% in Spain and 37% in France), to almost zero in Poland and Croatia, or slightly above (1.4% in Germany) where tertiary VET may be at levels different from ISCED 5. Malta, Slovakia, Netherlands, Hungary and Italy also had shares below 5%. The data do not include the concept of short cycle tertiary education in Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Lithuania, Romania, Finland, which were regarded as not applicable for statistical purposes (in Ireland definition differed and in Czechia data were not available. In 2020, as compared to 2015, in most EU Member States for which comparable data were available over time, the percentage increased or remained stable. The biggest changes were in Luxemburg (up by 12.2 percentage points) and Slovenia (up by 5.6 percentage) and Malta where the share dropped by 11.6 percentage points. A beak in time series affected the EU averages, due to methodological changes in France. Among non-EU countries with available data, values well below the EU average share in Iceland Switzerland and Norway but much higher in Turkey.

Table 18. Short-cycle VET graduates as % of first-time tertiary level graduates 

Source: Cedefop calculations based on Eurostat data, UOE data collection on formal education systems. Notes: d) ‘definition differs’; p) ‘provisional; z) ‘not applicable’; b):’break in time series’; data are not presented when they are not available and/or do not support sufficiently reliable comparisons across countries or over time.