{"id":434840,"date":"2025-09-04T15:28:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/09\/04\/italia-penultima-ue-per-conseguimento-laurea-e-la-situazione-peggiora\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T16:11:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T14:11:34","slug":"italy-ranks-second-to-last-in-the-eu-for-degree-attainment-as-the-situation-worsens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/09\/04\/italy-ranks-second-to-last-in-the-eu-for-degree-attainment-as-the-situation-worsens\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy ranks second-to-last in the EU for degree attainment as the situation worsens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; <strong><strong>Italy lags behind in the EU and falls further back at the UN level.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/strong>When it comes to education and university degrees, the country stands out for its low level of skills, studies, and preparedness. It is <strong>the second-to-last&nbsp;EU member state in terms of graduation rates, <\/strong>ahead only of Romania. The problem is certified by Eurostat in its publication of the progress made in meeting the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/eurostat\/statistics-explained\/index.php?title=SDG_4_-_Quality_education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"_blank noopener\">UN Sustainable Development target for&nbsp;education<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"HwtZe\" lang=\"en\"><span class=\"jCAhz ChMk0b\"><span class=\"ryNqvb\">The Sustainable Development Goal Quality Education (SDG 4) seeks to ensure access for all to quality education through all stages of life, as well as to increase the number of young people and adults who have the relevant skills for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship. One of the Eurostat indicators used to measure progress towards the target is the tertiary attainment rate, which <strong>measures the share of the population aged 25-34 that has completed tertiary education<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-434820\" src=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024-750x422.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sdg4-tertiary-education-2024-1140x641.jpg 1140w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/a>While among EU countries, in 2024, Ireland (65.2%), Luxembourg (63.8%), and Cyprus (60.1%) had the highest tertiary education attainment rates, on the other hand, Romania (23.2%), <strong>Italy (31.6%),&nbsp;<\/strong>and Hungary (32.3%) had the lowest rates.<\/p>\n<p>The updated Eurostat data also confirms a worsening of Italy\u2019s position: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/05\/27\/the-big-unknown-of-the-bachelors-degree-italy-third-to-last-in-college-graduation-rate\/\">at the end of 2023, Italy ranked third-to-last <\/a>for the number of university degrees and diplomas obtained, and <strong>a year later, its placement in this particular ranking has further deteriorated <\/strong>\u2014 further evidence of an issue that puts the country in an economically weak position. With an aging population and a shortage of young people, the low number of qualified individuals poses challenges to Italy\u2019s capacity for innovation and competitiveness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eurostat assesses how and to what extent EU countries are meeting the Sustainable Development Target dedicated to quality education. For Italy, the picture takes a turn for the worse: only Romania is worse off<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":493,"featured_media":434826,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25713],"tags":[31257,26180,27395,31425,26105,32013,32014],"class_list":["post-434840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-education-en","tag-eurostat-en-2","tag-dati-eurostat-en","tag-giovani-laureati-en","tag-laureati-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/493"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":434841,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434840\/revisions\/434841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}