Europe and the Crisis in Scientific Vocations

Abstract

During the 1990s, the number of students enrolling in science subjects at universities was declining each year in Germany, France, Italy, amongst other countries. These decreases are too readily attributed to a general disaffection caused by the image that younger generations have of scientific studies: they are seen as being the most ‘difficult’. This explanation is true but not sufficient. Over and above the similarities that can be seen between European countries — which stem from the fact that they are simultaneously experiencing strong growth in and democratisation of their student populations —, profound differences continue to exist, resulting in apparently similar effects, but with very different causes. Not only do higher education structures taken as a whole remain very different despite the Bologna process, but more fundamentally, the very meaning of the higher education system within each national society, its relationship with employment, and its position in individuals’ personal career paths all vary. A comparison between Germany, Italy and France shows three ideal types of relationship between training and employment and three ways of explaining symptoms that appear similar.