The majority of Spanish university students are satisfied with their studies, they are optimistic about the possibility of finding a job related to their training when they finish and they have plans to form a stable couple. However, in that future projection, one in three does not include having children.
When asked to what extent they want or not to have children in the coming years, six out of ten do not score above 5 on a scale from 0 to 10. This is reflected in the study on university students in Spain by the BBVA Foundation, which examines the values, attitudes and behaviors of this segment of society.
From this x-ray of the academic and personal life of those who pursue higher education in Spain, in addition to a significant decrease in the preference for having children, a high level of confidence in medicine, science and technology and, conversely, , an enormous detachment and mistrust towards religion and political parties.
Although six out of ten interviewees have grown up or have been educated in the Catholic religion, only four out of ten say they are currently Catholic and the level of religiosity is low in all of them (mean of 3.2 on a scale of 10).
If asked to position themselves from an ideological point of view, the majority do so close to the center (the average score is 4.8 on a scale where 0 indicates the extreme left and 10 the extreme right).
However, they lean towards much more progressive positions when asked about the acceptance of social practices such as same-sex marriage, the adoption of children by homosexual couples, euthanasia, abortion, the fact that people Homosexuals have children by donating sperm or eggs or that adolescents can terminate their pregnancy or change their sex without their parents' permission.
The report makes it clear that this type of practice arouses much less controversy among university students than among the Spanish population as a whole. Instead, these same young people mostly disagree with surrogacy.
They are also clearly against driving while drunk, using cocaine, sneaking onto public transportation, or copying other people's work without citing them or material from the Internet for their academic papers. However, they are much more lenient when it comes to downloading music or movies from the Internet without paying.
Regarding their attitude towards science, the BBVA Foundation study indicates that student expectations regarding the benefits of scientific potential are more favorable than those of the Spanish population as a whole, already high.
There is a broad consensus among them that science has reduced superstitions and people live better thanks to it, although a majority believes that these advances have also contributed to the destruction of nature and increase the danger of world war. In this sense, the concern of Spanish university students for climate change is very high. Two out of three believe that it is a problem that is not being given the importance it deserves, a belief that is accentuated among students of arts and humanities and those of experimental sciences.
Regarding why they chose the studies they are studying, the majority of the 3,430 respondents gave vocational reasons such as "it was the (career) that I liked the most" (33%) or "the one that best suited my vocation" (29% ). There are also those who chose these studies because they believed they had a better job opportunity (14%) or because it was better suited to their skills (14%). Most of them are satisfied with what they have chosen (7.2 on a scale from 0 to 10) to the point that seven out of ten say that if they could go back in time, they would choose the same studies again.
The good assessment is extended to theoretical training and contact with their teachers, but they are more critical when judging the employment guidance services and the job bank of their centers, as well as the possibilities of research that are offered to the students.
64% of those surveyed think of working when they finish their degree and see it as quite likely to do so in a job similar to what they have studied and, with this, gain economic independence. Because 70% of university students continue to live at home with their parents and 92% of those who live abroad depend totally or partially on the money that their parents give them.
