Once compulsory secondary education (ESO) is completed, Spanish students must begin to decide their academic and professional future. However, six out of ten students reach the doors of the university entrance exam without being clear about what to study the following year, just a few months before deciding whether they want to pursue a university degree or a vocational training cycle.
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This is shown by a study by Studeo, which collects data from nearly 20,000 Spanish students. According to this report, the two years of high school barely help students choose what their future professional vocation will be. During this stage, only 5% of students manage to decide what to do with their future, compared to the last year of ESO.
Health degrees concentrate university interest
That said, students’ preferences are concentrated in a small number of degrees. Health degrees – medicine, nursing, and biomedical sciences – concentrate about 9% of university interest. Among the degrees preferred by students are medicine (4.55% of study intention), psychology (3.1%), nursing (2.93%), law (2.38%), and business administration and management (2.28%).
However, preferences do not always match the options that students ultimately explore. The more areas of interest a student shows, the more their search for studies is subsequently reduced. The expected cutoff score also influences the choice. Among students who believe they will obtain high grades, only 6.4% expect to choose degrees with a cutoff score higher than 12 in the University Entrance Exam (PAU). However, these degrees end up concentrating 28.3% of their final decisions.
In Catalonia, Girona leads the percentage of students who want to study vocational training
The study sample, which mainly represents high school students, shows that interest in university remains higher than in vocational training. Only two out of ten students opt for this second educational path.
In Catalonia, Girona leads the percentage of students oriented towards vocational training studies (27.2%), followed by Tarragona (22.2%), Lleida (20.1%), and Barcelona (16.2%). In the province of Barcelona, there are also differences between localities. Ripollet (13%), Granollers (11.4%), l’Hospitalet (10.4%), and Mataró (10.4%) show percentages that double those recorded for students who want to study these cycles in Barcelona (4.9%) or Sant Cugat (5.5%).
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One in three students sets 3,000 euros as the maximum they can pay for their studies
Interest in vocational training grows as the family budget decreases. It goes from 8.9% among those who have up to 10,000 euros to spend on education next year, to 17.8% among those who set their educational budget limit at 3,000 euros.
Furthermore, the cost of studies is a limitation for some students. One in three students sets 3,000 euros as the maximum they are willing to pay when looking for post-high school studies. An amount that allows paying the tuition for any degree at a public university but limits access to double degrees – which have a tuition price higher than 3,000 euros – and to degrees at private universities.
Although the face-to-face modality remains the majority and reference option for 93.8% of students, 17.4% consider studying by combining online and face-to-face modalities, known as the hybrid modality.
