With almost a quarter of under-25s in Spain out of work, many are now turning their backs on traditional university degrees and opting instead for technical training that can withstand the threat of artificial intelligence on white collar work.
According to data from the report “Education at a Glance 2025. OECD Indicators”, 39 percent of students aged 15 to 19 in Spain are opting for vocational training courses instead of university. This rate has increased by nine percent over the past six years.
Spain is therefore well above the 16 percent vocational training rate of other OECD countries, and the 10 percent rate in the EU.
So why it is young Spaniards ditching traditional academic education in favour of formación profesional (vocational training)?
Advertisement
The most obvious reason is its high employability. While many university graduates face a precarious or saturated labour market, higher vocational training technicians are increasingly in demand.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report shows that digitalisation and the green energy are creating a massive demand for specialised technical positions that cannot always be studied at traditional universities.
The cut-off marks for high-demand degrees such as medicine, biotechnology, engineering and mathematics are also reaching record levels year after year.
This is further pushing students toward vocational training as a more accessible and effective alternative to find a job.
READ ALSO: Is vocational training in Spain worth it?
That’s not to say that Spaniards are only achieving these qualifications through technical colleges. A total of 47 percent of students in Spain actually access vocational training through a university degree.
According to the Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid, vocational training graduates in Spain have a 20 percent lower unemployment rate compared to standard university graduates.
Another reason that students are being drawn to vocation training is that graduates of these advanced programmes earn 11 percent more than those with higher secondary education.
According to the report “Salaries of Vocational Training Graduates” by the CaixaBank Dualiza Vocational Training Observatory, the five highest-paid jobs that require vocation training are industrial chemistry, emergency coordination and civil protection, production scheduling in mechanical manufacturing, industrial mechatronics and hearing aid audiology.
The technology sector is one of the most well paid, with salaries exceeding €30,000 per year.
In recent years, the Spanish government has sought to support the formación profesional or FP model.
In 2023, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that Spain would allocate €1.3 billion to vocational training in a bid to fight youth unemployment.
The plan would reportedly create 824 new training centres for digital skills, 45,000 vocational training positions and 1,500 classrooms for technology and entrepreneurship.
According to the latest Eurostat data, the youth unemployment rate in Spain stood at between 26 and 27 percent in February 2026, almost double the European Union average of approximately 14 percent.
