Here's how a degree from a university of applied sciences affects your paycheck

The median salary* of all participants in the current UAS salary study is CHF 104,000. This study is conducted every two years by the umbrella organization UAS Switzerland and sheds light on the salary, employment and continuing education situation of graduates of a Swiss UAS. The study is supported by all Swiss universities of applied sciences and various companies. The data is collected by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). All respondents have graduated from a Swiss university of applied sciences. They come primarily from German-speaking Switzerland (87 percent) and are mostly employed (98 percent). More than half of the respondents work in management positions, 13 percent in senior management.

University of Applied Sciences studies in the financial sector remain lucrative

It is still worth working in the finance and insurance sector. Here, the median salary is the highest of all industries at CHF 120,000. This is followed by the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, public administration and IT, where the median salary is also well above 110,000 Swiss francs.

*The median is the middle value - half of the wages are below it, half above. In contrast to the average, individual outliers at the top or bottom do not distort the picture.

70 percent of respondents were able to look forward to a wage increase this year. This confirms the general trend as a result of inflation. Most of the increases (over 50 percent of respondents) are in the range of up to 5 percent. The proportion of those who have not seen any wage increases is noticeably smaller than a year ago.

Majority of the UAS graduates surveyed are in management

Other results of the salary study are striking: Economists earn more in almost all sectors than those who studied in other UAS disciplines. The location of work also influences salaries: Zurich is, as usual, the front-runner with a median of over CHF 111,000 per year. Compared to the 2021 study, however, the eastern Swiss have caught up massively and, with a median of 106,000, are in second place this year, ahead of other countries (104,000) and northwestern Switzerland (103,230), which was still in second place at the time.

Although 70 percent of the study participants are under 40 years old, around 60 percent of all respondents hold a management position. They earn between CHF 106,000 and CHF 140,000 per year. Lower management in particular has thus caught up significantly from just under 101,000 to 106,000 Swiss francs since the last study. "The study confirms that graduates of universities of applied sciences play a key role in society and the economy," says Toni Schmid, managing director of UAS Switzerland. The older the UAS graduates, the more likely they are to be in an upper management position.

More than half plan further training

Interest in further training remains high. In fact, 60 percent of respondents are planning to take one in the foreseeable future. CAS and DAS are the most popular, followed by specialist and management courses. But the far more time-consuming MAS, MBA and EMBA also remain popular. Nevertheless, the proportion of those not planning any further education (a good 40 percent) is significantly higher than in the 2021 study, when the figure was 30 percent. A look at the results also shows that the desire for further education is greater among women than among men. Only 37 percent of women say they are not planning any further training, compared with a good 42 percent of men.

Further results and information of the FH wage study are available on www.fhlohn.ch available for a fee.