Resumo. ABSTRACT At the end of an undergraduate course, the graduates take feelings, experiences, beliefs and values that reflect in their professional involvement. This perception in relation to their training thus becomes an important evaluation tool of the offered higher education training. The objective of this study was to analyze the graduates’ perception of the initial training of the bachelor’s and licentiate degrees in Physical Education from a public university in the state of Santa Catarina, considering the positive and negative aspects of the undergraduate degree along with suggestions to improve the course. The study included 94 graduates, 47 with a bachelor's degree and 47 with a licentiate degree. For data collection, an online questionnaire was applied and analyzed through the content analysis technique. The most positive and negative points of the initial training included: professors; opportunities and experiences; supervised curricular internships; laboratories and scientific initiation; curriculum; infrastructure, location and time; activities and extension scholarships; friends and classes; personal issues. The graduates provided important suggestions to improve the initial training process, especially with regard to the course curriculum, infrastructure, class schedule and professors' pedagogical intervention.