STEM Student Recruitment Tools in Higher Education

The number of STEM higher education students is steadily declining, even though the European Union's Horizon 2020 program aims to maintain Europe's global competitiveness, strengthening the natural sciences, building links with other sciences, and disseminating them widely. It is essential to understand what motivates students to choose engineer science undergraduate courses for further studies. STEM education in public education should begin with competence development in early childhood, as competencies acquired at an early age can be strong determinants of later outcomes. The article analyses the degree of science promotion and enrolment programs launched by Hungarian universities with nine technical courses in the last four years and the efficiency with which they have implemented. The study uses a theoretical perspective that argues in what direction a central program can change its enrolment and science promotion strategy. The authors combined document analysis and open-ended questionnaires with institutional student promotion, recruitment strategies, and specific programs. These were closely related to the examination of their relationship to the profile and ambitions of each institution. In the STEM field of public education, out-of-school experience, and the role of targeted recruitment efforts are important in choosing to enter a STEM higher education program. Extracurricular activities and events were more inspiring for students, contributing to further interest in the STEM field and significant science choice. The results show that stakeholders who want to improve their STEM participation can consider partnerships with educational institutions, popular sciences, the media and organizations offering outdoor activities for children and adolescents to design information and communication to improve STEM participation.