A quarterly publication of AQU Catalunya
In this educational field, the demand for public places exceeded supply by 116.1% in the 2020-2021 academic year. In addition, 89.6% of students enrol out of personal interest.
The latest report developed by AQU Catalunya on employability and university education in the field of Construction states that for the degree programmes that comprise it – Architecture and Technical Architecture and Building – demand exceeded the number of places by 116.1% in the 2020-2021 academic year. In addition, the majority of people who access these studies do so out of personal interest, as they have expressed in the surveys used to compile this report: 89.6% stated that they did so for this reason, a much higher figure than the average for the Catalan Higher Education System (SUC), which is 73%.
Despite this predilection for Construction studies, the students rate their satisfaction below the SUC average, as they give the degrees in this field as a whole a score of 6.8 out of 10, while the SUC average is 7.3. The number of students who would repeat their studies is also slightly below the Catalan average. While for the SUC as a whole this figure exceeds 77%, in this area it is 74%.
The same applies to the occupational quality index, where Construction degrees obtain a result of 70.5 out of 100, while the average SUC index is 66.6 out of 100. Specifically, these high scores are boosted by the fact that more than 80% of graduates carry out tasks specific to their degree (the SUC average is 75%) and that the temporary nature of contracts in this area is 17.2% of the total number of people hired, while in the SUC as a whole it is 32.2%. In other words, temporary contracts are half that of the SUC average.
With regard to the opinion of construction graduate employers in Catalonia, 41.9% said that they had difficulty in recruiting people. A total of 63% of these also point to the lack of qualified people with the necessary skills for the job as the main reason for these difficulties. However, in the rest of the occupational fields analysed, outside Construction, 54% of employers report problems in hiring.
Finally, it is worth noting that employers in the field of construction are the least satisfied with the skills of recent graduates. Overall, they score 6.6 out of 10, while the average for the 18 areas analysed is 7.2. In addition, the skills that are most lacking among recent graduates are drafting building and renovation projects and preliminary projects and the use of digital information systems (e.g. BIM and GIS).
Employability and university education in the field of Construction