SharePsychology degree highly valued by employers
Yesterday we hosted the webinar “Employability and University Training in the field of Psychology”, where the results of the report Employability and university training in the field of Psychology were made public for the first time.
AQU Catalunya published yesterday the report Employability and university training in the field of Psychology, as part of the webinar organised by the Agency in collaboration with the “la Caixa” Foundation and the Official College of Psychologists of Catalonia.
This document shows that 8 out of 10 people enrolled on Psychology courses are women. According to employers, communication skills are the competency most in need of improvement, and graduate salaries are 500 euros lower than the Catalan average. These are some of the most outstanding results of the report published by AQU Catalunya: “Employability and university training in the field of Psychology”.
The latest report by AQU Catalunya on the employability and training of Psychology graduates leaves no doubt as to the popularity of this discipline. According to data obtained by the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency, pre-enrolment data for the 2021-2022 academic year at public universities indicate that the number of places requested as first choice in June represented 217% of the total number of places offered. In fact, so many students want to enrol for Psychology that it was the degree programme with the second highest number of new enrolments in the 2019-2020 academic year. Further, it should be noted that the majority of new Psychology students are women, who account for 8 out of 10 new enrolments.
But beyond their terms of admission to the bachelor’s degree programme, once they have completed their studies, in general their view of their time at university is positive. The report states that almost 9 out of 10 graduates would repeat their course, which puts them more than 10 percentage points above the overall average of the Catalan Higher Education System (SUC), which stands at 76.2%. However, in relation to the SUC averages, Psychology graduates are below average in terms of internships, to which they give a mark of 6.4 out of 10, a rating five tenths lower than the average of SUC graduates for their respective degrees.
On the other hand, the data on employment outcome indicators are not as positive as those on satisfaction with the education received. Among others, they show that graduates in Psychology are more likely to be unemployed, earn less and have more precarious contracts than other degrees. This is well demonstrated by their salary level, which three years after graduating places them at an average gross monthly salary of €1,700, almost €500 less than the average salary of all SUC graduates.
Employers of Psychology graduates tend to have less difficulty than other employers in recruiting the right people, possibly because the high popularity of the degree means that many are available. However, they claim that there is a “lack of qualified people with the necessary skills for the job”. Nevertheless, the score of 7.2 out of 10 that they give to their satisfaction in relation to graduates shows that this is not an overly problematic issue at present.
In order to improve the professional profile of graduates, employers argue that it would be positive for them to improve their communication and interpersonal skills, their ability to detect and assess people’s needs and, finally, their ability to intervene with people in different areas, from clinical to legal. These claims of the employers coincide with the elements that are currently most worked on in internships, which corroborates the suitability of this training element within the university period.
For more information on the results of the Employers in the Field of Psychology project, you can read the full report Employability and university training in the field of Psychology.
Also check out the infographic and rest of the documentation from the webinar and watch the video recording.