More than 36 000 students and post-docs will be involved until 2025 in research at the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) mainly through international collaborations. To what extent they value the skills
acquired? Do students expect that their learning experience will have an impact on their
professional future? By drawing from earlier literature on experiential learning, we have designed a
survey of current and former students at LHC. To quantitatively measure the students’ perceptions,
we compare the salary expectations of current students with the assessment of those now employed in
different jobs. Survey data are analysed by ordered logistic regression models, which allow
multivariate statistical analyses with limited dependent variables. Results suggest that
experiential learning at LHC positively correlates with both current and former students’ salary
expectations. Those already employed clearly confirm the expectations of current students. At least
two not mutually exclusive ex…