Although the total number of students in Croatia has increased by as much as 82 percent over the past fifteen years, this increase was based on quasi-market principles, and enrollment quotas have only partially followed employment trends and demand in the labor market. Thus, students who graduate in social and humanities sciences, unlike their colleagues who graduate in technical and natural sciences, ultimately find it much harder to secure jobs in their field or fail to find employment altogether.
This is the conclusion of the lecture ‘Structural Changes in Higher Education and Labor Market Outcomes’ by Master Zdenko Babić from the Economic Institute in Zagreb, organized by the Salon of Matica hrvatska. The list of professions with the weakest employment prospects is traditionally led by the Faculty of Political Science, where future journalists and political scientists are educated, followed closely by professions such as physical and health education teacher, graduated maritime transport engineer, philosophy professor, and graduated social worker.
On the other hand, graduated computer scientists, architects, electrical engineers, as well as doctors of medicine and dentistry, and masters of pharmacy have the highest chances of immediately replacing their student desks with work desks. The question arises as to why enrollment quotas do not reflect the needs of the labor market. Babić believes that faculties proposing quotas aim to maximize the number of enrolled students and thus operate more successfully regardless of the uncertain future employment of students, and such enrollment policies are most often implemented by the administrations of social sciences faculties because they can easily exceed their own capacity limits.
