Are Engineering Students Decreasing? A Spanish Case Study Manuel Blázquez Technology Department Instituto “Ramiro de Maeztu”, Madrid, Spain manuel.blazquez.merino@gmail.com Manuel Castro Electrical and Computer Engineering Department – DIEEC Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia – UNED Madrid, Spain mcastro@ieec.uned.es Edmundo Tovar Computer Department Technical University of Madrid , Madrid, Spain etovar@fi.upm.es Martín Llamas Universidad de Vigo Vigo, Spain martin.llamas@det.uvigo.es Inmaculada Plaza President of Education Society Spanish Chapter Universidad de Zaragoza Zaragoza, Spain iplaza@unizar.es Russ Meier IEEE Education Society Meetings Chair Milwaukee School of Engineering, WI, USA meier@msoe.edu Abstract — There is an idea that engineering degrees are experiencing a decrease in number of students. This is a fact that has concerned many worldwide engineering societies. The reasons may be based in a loss of motivation among students to begin a difficult career, in spite of great expectations jobs proposed from the society. However, this paper offers some data that could change this thought, particularly in Spain. Figures, demographical statistics, students’ opinions and university data can give an answer to the question of enrollment and provide some conclusions why engineering careers are less demanded from students. Is it real or just myth? Keywords-component; attracting; engineering degrees; young students; education I. INTRODUCTION Spain is located in the southwest of Europe and had a population of around 47 million inhabitants in 2009. Spain has approximately one half million square kilometers and it is the third largest European country behind Russia and France. Spain can be defined as a global country because of her boundaries and history. In the north, Europe is extended. In the South there is a great connection with Africa. The East has provided to Spain a rich Mediterranean culture, and in the West, as well as Portugal, the Atlantic Ocean has given the gate to America. Thus, Spain has been and is a crossroad country in world history. This is something that has deeply penetrated in every different region of Spain, and that nowadays is part of her heritage. Due to a dynamic history, Spain has taken since her roots the seed of exploration and invention, acquired and absorbed from the first civilizations such us the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Native-Americans and Europeans. II. SPAIN, A 21ST CENTURY COUNTRY Spain supports, nowadays, a balanced division between the industrial economic sector and the social services sector. Her economical world power situation let Spain offer to the population an extended employment diversity, from which a great diversity on training has been developed. A guaranteed educational system based in universality has permitted a massive access to superior studies through University and other institutions. However, some data indicators show that the Spanish population is not making good use of the resources generated in previous decades when the most advantageous economic, social and political situation had been established. Through this article, some figures, data and proposed solutions will be offered. We include in this article data of the research developed giving an idea about relations within educational aspects in Spain in the last decade. We filtered and scanned them selecting the most interested for our study, [1, 2, 3, 11]. III. PRIMARY AND COMPULSORY SECONDARY EDUCATION IN SPAIN According to Spanish laws and European Union directives, access to basic education is guaranteed in Spain, that is, it’s compulsory and it’s a right for the whole population to access primary and secondary studies from age 6 to 16 years-old. In 2008, primary education (from 6 to 11 year-old children) was offered in 13.502 educational centers. The number of pupils attending public and private schools was 2.483.364 students. This educational stage is composed of a 6 year course set, in which students attend a first phase from 1º to 3º course and attend a second one from 4º to 6 º courses. Mainly, all the students attending finish this stage in a successful way, but a small percentage of those students does not, and they must 978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education" April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan Page 242