Balkan Optimism vs. European Realism: What Data Reveal About Teenagers’ Expectations After School

The topic of career choice has interested me for a long time, perhaps because the process was not an easy one for me personally. Or rather, I made my choice quickly, but I regretted it just as quickly.

It actually reminds me of a funny story. When I was still working at the university, I once helped with admissions to our master’s program. Applicants had to write a motivation letter explaining why they wanted to study in our program. I’ll never forget one letter from a graduate of the Physics Faculty at Moscow State University. It began:

“On September 1, 20__, I started studying at the Faculty of Physics, Moscow State University. On September 2, I realized it was a big mistake.”

Despite that, he finished his degree and later decided to change his field. I don’t remember if he got into our program, but I definitely could relate to his story.

Maybe that’s why I’m so interested not only in how people choose their professions but also in how they decide to change their professional paths. I love stories about people who switch careers in adulthood.

Now I’m planning to apply for a grant for independent researchers, and I want to study how teenagers make career decisions, how they choose what to study first and why people later decide to change not just jobs but entire professional domains after already working in their original field. I’m currently looking for open datasets and want to combine quantitative analysis with qualitative interviews of people who, for one reason or another, have changed their specialization.

In the process, I came across an interesting set of questions from the PISA 2022 database about what 15-years students think about their life after finishing school and the role they see for schools and parents in it. I decided to look, first, at how the situation looks in Balkan countries (Greece, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia) and whether it differs from that in more developed European countries (Germany, France, and the UK). Second, I wanted to see whether there are differences between immigrant and native students.

Feelings about future

Here’s what I found. Below you can see the distribution of responses from 15-year-old students. The chart shows the percentage of those who agreed (to varying degrees) with statements about what they expect after finishing school and how they feel about their future.

We see an interesting pattern here. First, in the Balkan countries, about one-third of respondents (among those who answered these questions) said they do not feel prepared for life after school. In contrast, in more developed European countries, that share is significantly higher, in Germany it reaches 50%!

Second, most students in these countries consider themselves well-informed about their options after school: 60% or more agreed with that statement. Germany again stands out, with a slightly lower percentage of students feeling informed.

Third, in most countries about one-third of students say they feel parental pressure to follow a certain path. This percentage is lower in Germany and Greece but highest in Slovenia.

And finally, in the Balkans, just over one-third of students are worried that they won’t have enough money in the future. That means the majority are confident they will have enough! In Germany, France, and the UK, the percentage of those worried about money is higher. Perhaps life there is simply more expensive — or maybe the kids are more realistic. Hard to say; it needs more digging.

Role of school

The next set of questions was about how students see the role of school in preparing them for the future.

It’s good to see that in all these countries, fewer than a third of students think that school is a waste of time. At the same time, almost half of respondents — and in some countries even more — believe that school has done little to prepare them for life after graduation. In Germany, the share is especially high — 72%!

Still, the vast majority agree that school teaches things that can be useful in the future. Germany again stands out: only 41% agree with that statement, and just 35% say that school helped them gain confidence in making future decisions. In most of the other selected countries, more than 50% of students agreed that school helps build confidence in planning their future.

Educational expectations

There are also interesting cross-country differences in educational expectations. For example, more than 80% of students in Greece expect to obtain higher education, while in Germany that share is just above 40%.

Proportion of of Students Expecting to Obtain Higher Education (PISA 2022)

Overall, it seems that students in the Balkans are more optimistic — they worry less about financial insecurity and more often expect to get a university degree. In contrast, Germany stands out as the least optimistic case among the selected countries. German students are significantly more likely to say that school did not prepare them for life and to feel uncertain about their future choices. In many ways, this seems paradoxical: one of the most developed and well-resourced education systems in Europe appears to produce students who feel less ready for life after school. Perhaps this reflects higher expectations, a more critical attitude toward education, or simply a more realistic view of adult life.

Immigrants - native gap

Of course, differences between countries can be explained by many factors. For example, immigrant students might evaluate their future differently or respond differently to questions about confidence and financial expectations. I’ll leave the topic of differences between immigrants and natives for the next post. But just as a teaser, I looked at expected education levels.

Proportion of of Students Expecting to Obtain Higher Education, by Immigrant Status (PISA 2022)

In Balkan countries, where there aren’t many immigrants, native and immigrant students show similar results, except that first-generation immigrants in Greece and Croatia are less likely to expect to obtain higher education.

In more developed countries, particularly in Germany and the UK, immigrants more often expect to get higher education. In France, only second-generation immigrants are more likely than natives to expect a university degree. It would be interesting to see how this correlates with the actual rates of higher education attainment among immigrants and natives — for that, we’d need another dataset, such as PIAAC. In the next post, I’ll take a closer look at the differences between native and immigrant students.