Data Analysis and Related Applications, Volume 2

4Capturing School-to-Work Transitions Using Data from the First European Graduate Survey

The transition from education to work represents a critical stage in the lives of young individuals. Over the past decades, the transition into the working life has increasingly come to be seen as more varied and less standardized. The reasons for more varied transition patterns are certainly multi-faceted. This chapter serves both descriptive and analytic aims. From a descriptive perspective, we focus primarily on addressing the question of whether, how and to what extent transitions differ between European countries. Alongside, attempts to identify and explain the mechanisms behind different transition patterns are explored. The analysis is cross-national with data drawn from the EUROGRADUATE Pilot Survey, a one-off pilot survey of recent graduates in eight European countries.

4.1. Introduction

One of the most significant current discussions in labor sociology is the successful entrance of young individuals into the labor market. When we specifically examine university-to-work transitions, the term successful refers to finding a job that meets a number of necessary criteria: the type of employment contract matches the employee’s desire (in the sense that the graduate is not part-time or has a fixed contract against their will), the earnings can cover their basic needs and it is satisfactory (in the sense that it is relevant to the subject studied and the level of educational attainment). ...