Interest and Disinterest from College Students for Higher Education in Sciences

Abstract

Because sciences plays an important role in our contemporary societies, through, for example, the omnipresence of the technological developments which arise from it, it is not surprising that several authors support that a scientifi c literacy for all the stu- dents is as important as artistic, literary or historic cultures.In spite of this recognized importance for scientific formation, we observe a reduction in the interest for the scientific careers. In most of industrialized countries, this decrease of interest leads to a decrease of enrollment in science and technology university pro- grams. Students’ proportion in science and technology in universities have been con- tinually decreasing for the last fi fteen years, and an increasing gap is observed between the social demand and the offer in scientifi c and technical expertise. We observe in particular this phenomenon in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Australia, in Japan, in Canada and almost everywhere worldwide. This report is confi rmed by the OECD, which deplore that the domains of science and engineering are the least popular with less than quarter of the registrations at university. Furthermore, up to half of the students registered in science change program for other fi elds of study before the end of their schooling.