Why do teaching students choose the teaching career?

In order to achieve an improvement in the training of students in compulsory education, it is necessary to have good teachers, who are involved, committed and motivated by their work. In this paper we present an analysis of the main reasons why university students choose a teaching career for their professional future, paying attention to the factors that could be influencing these reasons. We analyzed a sample of 409 students from different courses, from nine Spanish public universities. To collect the information, we used an adapted and reduced version of the FIT-Choice scale (Factors Influencing Teaching Choice). The results show that the best valued factors were the altruistic ones, linked to the social function of teaching. In the opposite direction, there were factors linked to extrinsic motivation, among which the material advantages of the profession stand out. Finally, it has been identified a progressive loss in the importance of factors linked to job and family stability as students progressed through the teacher degrees.