ANO “Russia – a country of opportunities” and GC “EFKO” conducted a survey among students of Russian universities and found out how they will defend term papers and diplomas this year, where they want to work and what areas they consider the most promising.
The study revealed, in the opinion of Russian students, marketing and advertising, FoodTech, as well as EdTech – the industries that will develop most actively in the next 10 years. 65% of students plan to get a job in one of these areas.
With regard to the defense of graduation theses, the “startup as a diploma” format is four times more common among masters than among bachelors. Postgraduate students more often than students at other levels of study choose the format of a published scientific article as their graduation work. Every second student this year linked the topic of the coursework or diploma with future work.
Students mainly want to start a career in Russia – 72% of respondents said this.
The survey results showed that after the pandemic, students began to need more stability and confidence in the future. When choosing a job in 2021, they began to focus more on the level of wages (as indicated by 83% of respondents), opportunities for growth and development (73%), and reliability and stability of work (55%). In 2020, students prioritized opportunities for growth and development and considered them even more important than the salary level (85.5% and 82.7%, respectively).
For another 42% of students, flexible working hours are important. When answering the question about the format of work, only a third of the students indicated that they would prefer to work in an office. The rest would like to work remotely or with the ability to come to the office. Thus, compared to 2020, the share of students who would like to work only in the office has decreased (in 2020 – 40%).
Students increasingly want to be entrepreneurs. Last year, only 21% of graduates spoke about the desire to create their own business. The top three desired jobs in 2021 also included the public sector (22%) and educational / research organizations (16%). 12% of respondents would like to go freelance.
It is interesting that students are more and more afraid of robotization every year – 16% worry that robots will perform their work in the future (last year – 14%), 46% are not worried about this probability (last year – 53%), 38% are neutral about this.
It should be noted that technology companies remain the most attractive employers among students of leading Russian universities. According to FutureToday, graduates dream of getting a job at Yandex, Google and Apple.
Source: Research of ANO “Russia – the country of opportunities”
