School-to-work transition of higher education graduates in four European countries

While there is a rich literature on the school-to-work transition in developed countries, an equally robust literature is lacking for post-communist countries. We analyse the patterns of labour market entry of higher education graduates in several formerly communist countries by drawing on the HEGESCO data set, which provides information on the school-to-work transition of higher education graduates leaving education in 2002/2003 in four countries: Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia. The results of Cox and logistic regressions show multiple differences among these countries in the speed of labour market entry, stability of the first job and education-job match among graduates. It is argued that a large amount of the variation among countries in the school-to-work transition can be attributed to differences in labour market circumstances.