Graduates from tertiary education, Slovenia, 2019

Lowest number of graduates in the last ten years
In 2019, 16,100 graduates successfully completed tertiary education in Slovenia, which is 3.5% fewer than in 2018 and the fewest in the last ten years. In 2019, 2,094 graduates completed higher vocational education, which is 5.1% more than in 2018, and 14,006 higher education, which is 4.6% fewer than in 2018. 8,410 students graduated from higher undergraduate education and 5,596 from higher postgraduate education. Among them, there were 477 new doctorate graduates, which is 3.5% more than in 2018.

More than 40% of graduates under 25 years of age
6,722 or 41.8% of tertiary education graduates in 2019 were less than 25 years old, which is 2.2 percentage points more than in 2018. In 2019, the share of graduates under 25 years of age, which had been increasing in the last ten years with the exception of two years (2014 and 2016), exceeded 40% for the first time. The tertiary education graduates in 2019 under 25 years were dominated by higher education graduates (86.1%), full-time study graduates (93.0%), female graduates (59.8%), and graduates with Slovenian citizenship (95.4%). It should be noted that the share of higher vocational education graduates, part-time study graduates, male graduates and foreign national graduates has been increasing over the last five years.

Business, administration and law graduates leading
Similar to 2018, most of the tertiary education graduates in 2019 completed their study in the programmes of business, administration and law (2,966 or 18.4%), and engineering, manufacturing and construction (2,842.5 or 17.7%). On the other hand, the fewest of them graduated in the programmes of agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary (504 or 3.1%), and information and communication technologies (673.5 or 4.2%). Compared to 2018, the number of tertiary education graduates increased the most in information and communication technologies (by 15.0%) and services (by 9.9%). The largest drop in the number of tertiary education graduates in 2019 occurred in the fields of business, administration and law (by 13.2%) and arts and humanities (by 6.4%).

More than 5% of graduates foreign-born
In 2019, 869 graduates with foreign citizenship successfully completed tertiary education in Slovenia, which is 6.2% more than in 2018 and the most since 2016. Their number has more than tripled in the last ten years (from 257 in 2009 to 869 in 2019). Their share among all tertiary education graduates in 2019 was 5.4%; it exceeded 5% for the first time and was the highest in the last ten years. In 2019, 36 graduates with foreign citizenship completed higher vocational education and 833 graduated from higher education. Among them, there were 59 new doctoral graduates, which is one eighth of all new doctoral graduates in Slovenia in 2019.