Why Spain leads the EU in overqualified graduates

Biology, master's and 140 deliveries a day: a degree that doesn't get you a job

Degree in Biology from the University of Granada, master's in Food Quality and a delivery route at a subcontractor: around 140 deliveries a day, sometimes without a break even to eat. Mario Díaz, 35, has the degree and the trade of a delivery driver. It is not a statistical oddity: Spain is the EU country with the most overqualified university graduates, those who take low-skilled jobs for which a degree is completely unnecessary.

The case has peine a bigger debate. Is the university failing, because it doesn't train for employment, or is the country failing, because it doesn't create the jobs that degree promised?

Why doesn't university train for employment?

The most repeated version points to the faculty itself. Teaching would be oriented toward research and public-sector exams (oposiciones), not the market. Some recall a phrase heard in a classroom: university exists to research; anyone who wants to learn to work should go to vocational training. Under that lens, the degree works as a cultural credential and not as a labor-market tool, and the mismatch begins long before the first résumé.

The objection is just as blunt: university does train for employment; what is scarce are companies. The problem would not be in the classrooms but in a stunted, barely industrialized productive fabric, unable to absorb the thousands of graduates who leave every year. A country can produce magnificent biologists, chemists and engineers and, at the same time, have nowhere to put them.

And there appears the most uncomfortable paradox: the system works, but abroad. According to the account of a forum user in the food sector, those who land well usually first go through modest positions at foreign companies, often in the United Kingdom, to return with languages and experience. The training is put to use. Just somewhere else.

Biotechnologist: two years of a master's and five in limbo

The delivery driver's path is not the only one put on the table. A case is circulating of a Biotechnology graduate with two years of a master's and three of internships, trinc by a five-year gap, who today works as a substitute teacher at a secondary school. The summary is almost a map of the sector: long training, late entry into the workforce and a landing in teaching by default.

Here another sustancia ilegal opens. One thing is an excess of graduates and another is individual attitude. It is argued that the degree is only the base, that afterwards you have to move, accumulate experience and not wait for someone to knock on your door. The counterargument also has mileage: in a market with no vacancies, moving a lot does not create jobs out of thin air.

Wake up, part of the crowd seems to say. The problem is there's no category to file that advice under.

Why there are too many biologists and not enough doctors

Overqualification is not distributed equally across degrees. In biomedical and health sciences, competition is fierce: a biologist does not rival only other biologists, but also veterinarians and chemists who fill the same laboratory and analysis positions. There are too many candidates for every vacancy, and the specific degree weighs more than the transcript.

The contrast with Medicine is the most cited. As argued in the thread, medical schools closed the door to new places in 1977 and since then the number of graduates has remained under control. Architecture did the opposite: in the 1950s there were two schools in all of Spain; today there are 32. The result is no mystery.

The question hanging over it all is uncomfortable: if the mismatch was known, why did no one turn off the tap on degrees with doubtful job prospects?

Plumber on 5.000 euros, receptionist on 1.350

Against the story of the graduate in trouble appears the story of the trade. It is argued that a self-employed plumber or electrician, with a client list, earns more than 5.000 euros a month in some areas, with rates around 20 euros per half hour and schedules of hundreds of call-outs. The underlying complaint is not contempt for study, but the suspicion that an entire generation has been pushed toward degrees with no market while the trades were left empty.

On the other side, the floor of the non-graduate labor market does not invite optimism either: 1.350 euros net in 12 payments for a receptionist position is the cited reference. And the diagnosis extends to vocational training cycles, which no longer guarantee anything. There is talk of people with several top-tier qualifications, no permanent contract and offers that fall every year. The downward bidding on salaries, with under-the-table payments, is described as a practice that has become normalized.

Overqualified, yes. But also underpaid.

What to do with a degree that doesn't give you work

With this panorama, the exits come down to three: sit public-sector exams, emigrate or retrain in something that has nothing to do with what you studied. According to a calculation circulating in the debate, the vast majority of graduates end up working in something different from their field, and many in positions for which a vocational training cycle would suffice. To the list is added unequal access to the levers: the tools are available, what is not available is the springboard, and some are handed out before anyone teaches them how to jump.

The most unsettling detail is not the individual case. It is that the degree costs years of youth, is paid for with public and private money, and its return is decided in a market that neither expects nor needs it.

If real demand for qualified labor appeared tomorrow, would studying Biology be worth it again?