Measuring satisfaction with higher education among financially successful and unsuccessful university graduates

The paper discusses the features of professional trajectories by university graduates in the modern state of labor market uncertainty. Salary does not only serve as a formally differentiating indicator which reflects the success or failure of university graduates, but also affects their evaluation of the higher education they had received. The results of institutional research of 2017 (a single database of survey and administrative data) that reflects the level of satisfaction with higher education and employment among university graduates with different level of financial success amended for their actual employment after graduation and salary level is used as the empirical data. The research yielded the following results. The level of satisfaction with job and education amended for the level of financial success is 22% lower among bachelors, compared to that of masters. The key differentiating factor that determines graduates’ level of satisfaction with employment characteristics is their financial success. The more financially successful graduates of master programmes are, the less they are satisfied with opportunities to apply the skills they acquired at the university in their current job (42% among financially successful and 30% among unsuccessful). Such differences were not revealed among bachelors (56% were not satisfied with the skills they acquired at the university). On average, satisfaction with educational trajectories at the university among graduates of master programmes is 22% higher than that among bachelors. For now students choose egree programmes because they are not satisfied with basic higher education and have a personal need to increase their competitiveness on the labor market.