Education: University degree depends heavily on parental background

Children of academics are significantly more likely to have a university degree than those of non-academics. More than half (56 percent) of adults aged 25 to under 65, of whom at least one parent had a university degree, had a university degree themselves in 2021, according to the Federal Statistical Office.

In this population group, the university graduation rate was three times as high as among people whose parents had at most a vocational qualification or a university entrance qualification (19 percent) and almost five times as high as among people with formally low-qualified parents (12 percent).

According to the Federal Office, anyone who has neither a vocational qualification nor a university entrance qualification, but at most a secondary school or high school diploma, is considered to be formally low-skilled. In 2022, this applied to 2.8 million people (17 percent) aged 25 to under 65 in Germany. According to the report, 40 percent of children of formally low-skilled parents were themselves formally low-skilled in adulthood.

Differences in the educational level of citizens between the ages of 25 and 65 were also evident in terms of their immigration history, the statisticians report. In 2022, descendants of two immigrant parents born in Germany were less likely to have a university degree (19 percent) than people without an immigration history (25 percent) and were more likely to have low formal qualifications (23 percent compared to 10 percent). However, these differences can be fully explained by the lower average educational level of the immigrant parents, the Federal Office explains.