University: Enrollment by Field of Study
Trends and cross-national differences in subject popularity
The three indicators emphasize different facets of the same phenomenon: the actual proportion of new entrants per field, the variation in enrollment weighted by the relative importance of each field within the student population, and the absolute variation, which highlights sharp increases in enrollment for still-minority fields such as computer science.
Notably, trends in field popularity are far from uniform across Europe and often differ significantly from country to country: while some nations have seen a steady decline in economics enrollments, others have experienced a marked surge in interest.
The distribution of degree fields also exhibits distinct national patterns. In Belgium and Denmark, for instance, more than a quarter of students enroll in medicine, whereas engineering dominates in Germany, and science and mathematics attract one of the largest shares of students in the UK. Interestingly, in countries where PISA results indicate a stronger student affinity for reading over mathematics—such as Ireland, Sweden, and Italy—one-fifth of students opt for humanities degrees, well above the European average.
In certain cases, shifts in enrollment suggest changes in the disciplinary framing of courses of study within the country rather than genuine variations in student preferences. This was particularly evident in Italy between 2015 and 2016, when a substantial number of computer science majors, previously categorized under Science, were reassigned to the Engineering field.