Eurostat. Italy still penultimate in the EU in the ranking of graduates

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June 28, 2021 Italy remains at the bottom of the EU countries for the share of graduates: they are 29%, slightly up on last year (27%). The data refer to the age group between 25 and 34 registered in 2020.

Our country, according to data released by

, is therefore still far from the European average and that Brussels has set the objective: to pick up

the average of young people who have completed university education. The Italian share is higher only than that of Romania, equal to 25%. 

At the top of the European ranking based on the share of graduates registered in the individual countries is Luxembourg (61%), followed by Ireland and Cyprus (both 58%), Lithuania (56%) and the Netherlands (52%). These countries, together with Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Slovenia and Sweden, form the group of states that reached the European target early.

Overall, in 2020, 41% of the population aged 25 to 34 had completed university education in the EU. The share of female graduates (46%) was decidedly higher than that of men (35%). A gender gap, Eurostat observes, which has increased over time: from 9.4 percentage points recorded in 2011 to 10.8 in 2020. The share of men with university degrees has in fact grown over the last ten years, but at a slower rate than to that of women.

Eurostat data also highlighted how the percentage of those who successfully completed university studies has increased over the years: graduates between the ages of 25 and 54 were on average 36% while those between 55 and 74 were stop at 22%. The greatest difference between the two age groups, as much as 25 percentage points, was recorded in Ireland.