Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2011, during Spain’s economic crisis. The glut of lawyers, the drop in immigration, low online ad rates, expected public-sector cuts and the forecast for nutrition and mechanical engineering over the next 5-10 years reflect that moment.
Just as we previously published the university degrees with the best job prospects and demand, an article published today discussed the degrees with the worst prospects. I’m going to change a few points, though, because I don’t agree with some of them: in our view, dietetics and nutrition, as well as mechanical engineering, should not be ruled out, since they could offer excellent opportunities over the next 5–10 years.
Dietetics and nutrition is a degree with very few job openings when you go looking for work, but it gives you excellent opportunities to start your own business. In the very near future (the sooner the better), specialists in this field will be needed, working alongside other professionals, to advise people on their eating habits and so prevent certain diseases. As for mechanical engineering, it goes without saying that engineers will be needed to bring the hybrid car to market. Now let’s look at the degrees with the poorest career prospects.
1. Law
Spain is overflowing with lawyers, and some provinces even have more lawyers than open legal cases. The profession has been hit hard by the crisis, among other things because of the drop in the number of immigrants in the country, who, during Spain’s job boom, were big consumers of legal services to regularize their status.
On the other hand, lawyers are not adapting to the new era. There are many lawyers who do a bit of everything and very few who specialize in a specific area. Studying law is easy; the hard part is standing out from the rest and making a name for yourself in this world. In a previous article we discussed a business opportunity for new law graduates: the virtual lawyer.
2. Journalism
In journalism, we won’t talk about a crisis (though there is quite a big one), but rather about the adjustment the media are going through and the business model they’re applying to future journalists.
Digital newspapers now have many more readers than print ones, and the problem for online media is that, in Spain, online advertising still pays far less than print, so news outlets complain about a loss of profitability.
Journalists now know perfectly well what a commercial contract (a contract for services rather than an employment contract) and a freelance contract mean, because these are the kinds of contracts awaiting future journalists coming out of university. That’s why anyone thinking of studying journalism should be prepared for a very hard time finding a job and for ending up self-employed, selling their own reporting. Not to mention the precarious working conditions they currently face.
3. Advertising
While in the United States saying you work in advertising is synonymous with wealth, in Spain the profession doesn’t count for much. Some earn a little and some earn even less, doing the same work as our dear, respected British and American advertising professionals.
This is another degree that may offer very few job prospects, but it can open the door to your own business as an independent advertising agency. Advertising is a profitable business in all its forms and formats, since it is the main engine of industries that move trillions of euros around the world (TV, press, radio…).
4. Social work
I know about 15 people who took this degree and none of them works in the field, and they all had the same complaint: very few public-sector positions come up through oposiciones (Spain’s competitive civil service exams). And with a country that will have to make further cuts, studying this profession with the idea of getting a job through those exams will be like playing the lottery. Even so, we’ve already covered some careers with a future in this field: The most in-demand jobs related to social services.
5. Chemistry, art history, philology and music
These are the other four degrees that were mentioned, and we don’t have much to say about them, since we don’t know the market open to professionals in these fields. I’ll only say that chemistry, like nursing, tends to be paid below the European average in Spain, which is why I know that many nurses, either because there are no jobs or because of the low salaries, often leave Spain in search of work.
As for art history, philology and music, we’ll leave it to people who studied them to speak from their own experience about the difficulties of finding work.
However, I want to stress one thing: some university degrees don’t lack opportunities; it’s just that, because of our business mindset, we tend not to approach them the right way. As we’ve discussed on several occasions, in Spain people tend to study a degree in order to work as an employee, and rarely with the idea of becoming an entrepreneur, and that’s something we should change.
Further reading
