Bulgaria is among the European countries with the highest share of university graduates with a permanent contract of employment. Unemployment among bachelors and masters from Bulgarian universities is less than 5%. This transpired in Eurograduate 2022, a large-scale European study on graduate employment through the Grade project, the Ministry of Education and Science said Monday. It is one of the partners in the project,reports Bulgarian News Agency (BTA).

The survey was conducted in 17 European countries - Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. The respondents were graduates of in Bachelor's and Master's programmes from the classes of 2016/2017 and 2020/2021.

The Bulgarian survey had 3,606 respondents. It was conducted entirely online.

The Bulgarian undergraduate and postgraduate students who participated in the survey were satisfied with their studies, overall. The average satisfaction among them is 3.8 on a scale of 1 to 5, which is defined as high satisfaction. It coincides with the average for the countries surveyed.

The share of Bulgarian graduates who had some international experience (Erasmus training, work or internship) during their studies is close to the average for the other European countries (around 20%).

The share of working people among both bachelor's and master's degree holders in Bulgaria is high - between 84 and 88% for the different groups represented in the study. These shares are also close to the average for the other European countries.

Unemployment among the respondents is 5% or less.

Job satisfaction is also high: 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 5 for the class of 2016/2017 and 3.8 for the class of 2020/2021.

At the last annual meeting of the European Graduate Tracking Network in May 2024, Bulgaria expressed a strong interest in participating in the next phase of the survey, along with Malta, Cyprus and Romania, the Education Ministry said.