Professional expectations and career motivations among engineering students: a case study of the students of the Telecommunications School of the "Universidad Politecnica de Madrid", Spain

The Unit for Research and Documentation (GED) of the Telecommunications High Technical School (ETSIT) of the "Universidad Politecnica de Madrid" (UPM) has carried out a survey during the month of February, 1994, among 5th year students in order to analyze their professional expectations in the short and in the long run, and to compare them with their motivations both before engaging in theses studies and now where they are about finishing the career. The basic hypothesis is that both, expectations and motivations, go together, so that various career motivations lead to different professional expectations. The sample consists of 195 students who attended the class of Sociology on February 21, 1994. Since it is not a probabilistic sample, it only represents those students who filled out the questionnaire so that further inference to other universes is not allowed. Yet, the great number of students being surveyed could permit certain inference activity into the whole universe of students of this school. This paper is divided into three parts: (1) the motivations for starting this career and for still studying it are analyzed; (2) the professional expectations both in the short term (5 years) and in the long term are studied, comparing those expectations with the engineering real figures; and (3) the relationships between career motivations and professional expectations.