Still few university graduates in Italia (and 21,000 have also left)

In spite of the benefits that a university degree guarantees from the point of view of employment and social mobility, young Italians with a tertiary degree are still too few: 31.6% in the 25-34 age bracket compared to 44.1% of the EU average. And, as if that were not enough, we are also struggling to retain them: in the last year surveyed (2024) the balance between those who left Italy and those attracted abroad was negative by 21,000. This is the picture taken by Istat in its annual report 2026.

In addition to better social mobility, according to the Institute of Statistics, investment in education guarantees better results in the labour market: the employment rate reaches 85.3% among those with a tertiary qualification, compared to 74.6% among high school graduates and 56.1% among those with only a secondary school diploma.

The educational qualification also emerges as the main protective factor against destitution: absolute poverty affects 15.1% of people aged 25 and over with no more than a secondary school diploma against 2.3% of university graduates. And it is associated with a higher life expectancy at 30 years of 4.2 years among men and 2.8 years for women.

However, we still produce few graduates. Although the number of 25-34 year-olds earning a degree every year has almost tripled from 1999 to 2024 (up to 544,000), only 31.6% of us have a tertiary degree, compared to 44.1% of the EU average. Italy is also struggling to retain the most specialised profit: in 2025, 10.4% of PhDs trained in Italia will work abroad. The main reasons are the greater opportunities for suitable (81.7%) or better paid (73.7%) employment.

Worsening the picture is also the fact that the balance of human capital with foreign countries remains negative. In 2024, among young Italians aged 25-34 with at least a university degree, expatriations (25,000) far outnumbered repatriations (over 4,000), resulting in a net loss of almost 21,000 highly educated young people, confirming the erosion of highly skilled human capital.