When you have "only" a BAC + 3. Students and professional integration.

Summary This thesis deals with the professional integration of students. It raises two questions in particular: the question of the objective possibilities of professional integration for higher education graduates, and thus makes a contribution to the debate on the devaluation of diplomas; and the question of the experience of professional integration of young people in the French institutional and social context marked by the need to establish oneself professionally. This phenomenon must be put into perspective: young people with higher education degrees have much lower levels of unemployment than non-graduates. The usual measures of the profitability of diplomas are reassuring: an additional year of higher education continues to bring an 8% increase in income. The devaluation of diplomas is therefore only a "myth". However, these optimistic observations are based on very aggregated indicators: performance in terms of professional integration is assessed according to the number of years of study or the level of the degree. For example, we measure the chances of professional integration of baccalaureate and master's degree holders and compare the relative profitability of the degrees. Studies are thus understood as a homogeneous body of knowledge: the pathways, the teaching contexts, the intensity of the work of each student, and, above all, the degree specialization pursued are erased in the traditional measure of the profitability of degrees. This thesis, based on a secondary analysis of quantitative data, seeks to refine this measure by reintroducing the degree specialty. It is observed that, for equivalent levels of education, there are strong disparities between training specialties in the probability of entering the labor market and in the quality of jobs held. The specialization determines access to a qualified job as much as the level of training. Thus, this work concludes that there are local educational inflation effects, located on specific training specialties.