The social origin of Italian graduates, a study by Almalaurea

The proportion of Italian graduates between 45 and 64 is 14.1% among men and 16.1% among women. But considering only the parents of graduates, the share of men rises to 21.1% and that of women to 21.8%. The current graduates, therefore, come from more culturally favoured family contexts, writes Almalaurea in his Annual report on 2021, the latest available.

If one of the objectives of education is to foster social mobility, this is not happening in Italy, or only to a small extent. And it’s not just a 2021 phenomenon. In ten years, as of 2011, the share of graduates with at least one graduate parent has increased from 26.9% to 30.9%. 

Graduates of single cycle master’s degree programmes come more frequently from families with at least one graduate parent (43.5%) than graduates who have opted for a "3+2" course (28.2% for first level graduates and 31.3% for two-year master’s degrees) - writes Almalaurea -. The disciplinary groups in which parents have a higher level of education are legal (38.6%) and industrial and information engineering (37.2%). 

Almalaurea also analyses the social (and professional) class of the graduates' parents: 22.3% of the graduates come from families of entrepreneurs, executives or freelancers ("high class"); 31.3% from families of the "middle-class employees"22.7% from families belonging to the "autonomous middle class"; 22.1% from the "executive working class".

There’s a very high percentage of graduates who have the same degree as their parents, or at least one.  The 19.9% of graduates with at least one graduate parent choose a course from exactly the same disciplinary group as one of the parents. This figure rises to 34.6% for single cycle graduates, while it is lower for biennial graduates (17.4%) and for first level graduates (16.9%).