Student salary expectations from around the world

By Christopher Van Mossevelde

In a survey on career expectations, Universum asked 224,542 students in 16 countries what they expected to earn in their first job after their studies. The results show that Swiss students expect to earn the most (£48,092 per year), followed by the Danish (£43,134), Norwegians (£38,686) and Germans (£34,171).

The results are from Universum’s Student Surveys, conducted during the first quarter of 2009. Students who were studying for degrees in Business, Engineering, IT, Humanities, Law and Natural Sciences were targeted at the most renowned academic institutions in the world.

The results do not represent current salary levels per country, yet are an indication of graduates’ salary demands. Each respondent was specifically asked: “What is your expected annual salary before taxes (excluding commission and bonus) at your first employer after graduation?”

The students that expect to earn the least are from Italy (£16,580), Poland (£8,980), Russia (£7,885) and China (£5,049). If you compare the Swiss to the Chinese, the difference is substantial, since the Swiss would earn more than nine times more than their Chinese counterparts.

Students, whose salary expectations were in the middle-range, from highest to lowest, were: American (£29,822), Finnish (£29,025), French (£28,396), Swedish (£28,318), Austrian (£25,771), Dutch (£24,936), British (£22,195) and Spanish (£20,076).

All 16 countries combined, the mean forecasted salary was £25,705 per annum. Expected future earnings for students in the Netherlands, UK and Spain are therefore below average and in comparison to the Swiss, British students would only earn 46 per cent of what their counterparts hope to make.

As the UK has been strongly affected by this recession, this could explain why British graduates aren’t aiming higher. Anne Margrethe Mannerfelt, market unit manager of Western Europe at Universum explained, “Following this recession, graduates aren’t expecting big pay checks and are willing to make concessions, so long as they get the work experience they so badly need”.