Abstract:

In the Spanish educational system, students can access university through several routes, but they most frequently do so after the completion of the baccalaureate and the entrance exam to the university. From those two, a mark is inferred that must be higher than the cut-off mark of the chosen grade so as to join it. The subject Chemistry corresponds to the baccalaureate modality "Science and Technology" and it is taught during its second and last year.

In this work we tried to assess why the Chemistry grade students chose the degree, the impact that the teaching-learning of the Chemistry subject has had during the baccalaureate, and finally the adequacy of the Chemistry content of the 2nd baccalaureate school year as the basis for the studies at the university. With such aim, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among 86 first year Chemistry degree students at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of the Basque Country, in the campus of Biscay, during the last scholastic days of the 2016-2017 academic year.

More than the half of the surveyed (56%) stated their first career option had been the Chemistry degree. The following grades chosen as the first option were Biology (14%), Biochemistry (10%), Pharmacy (5%), Chemical Engineering (4%), etc. Except for the Pharmacy degree, which is not taught at the campus of Biscay, the cut-off mark was higher than that of the Chemistry degree in the school year 2017-2018, 8.9.

Regarding the subject in High School, the surveyed students mostly (52%) depicted the subject Chemistry as attractive in 4 points out of 5 and the 67% of them considered having had a teacher as good as 4 or 5 points out of 5. It is also remarkable that, concerning the experimental practice and despite its importance, as stated at the program of the Basque autonomous community, the 37% of the students reported they had not done laboratory work at all and only the 27% had practiced at the lab. The remaining 36%, had either seen a demonstration in the laboratory, watched a video and/or had seen the script.

Concerning the difficulty of the chemistry contents in its different sections in the 1st year of the degree as compared to High School, most of the students (74%) answered they observed a continuity in the Inorganic Chemistry contents and approximately half of them answered Organic Chemistry was more difficult in the degree. The percentage of the questioned students who declared the contents were more difficult at the Chemistry degree increased up to 85% or more when questioned about Analytical Chemistry and Physical Chemistry,

Keywords:

Baccalaureate, career options.