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The offer, in the last century, of studies in the STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) meant for universities the possibility of offering their graduates teachings with which to acquire knowledge, skills and practices that would make them professional demanded in the future. It should not be forgotten that, at the end of these careers, its students were among the most sought after, best paid and most “competent” due to their ability to incorporate into their profile some essential elements such as innovation, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving and the application, ultimately, of knowledge to life itself. Now, in the XXI century, society faces new challenges that need not only great "experts",but also of people who have a transversal training in multiple fields of knowledge. Professionals who integrate both science and humanities knowledge with the aim of promoting interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary thinking, with a holistic vision.
Francesc Solé Parellada, vice president of the Knowledge and Development Foundation (CyD), supports the “multidisciplinary” turn of the universities. Solé Parellada points out that “we are immersed in a world where professions are going to be very diverse. It is a challenge that universities must face. In what way? Well, through the creation of mixed degrees that combine technical careers with humanities, and so on. The future of work, and also as citizens, of current university students requires a combination of knowledge and the University must be able to make it available to them ”. Likewise, Solé points out that the university's offer of new degrees “needs a lot of imagination. The University must be flexible, adapt, and not be afraid to close a degree, open a new one or combine degrees,because what is truly important is that its students are people who, at the end of their studies, can adapt to the job market ”.
Multidisciplinary model
In order to accommodate the new competencies demanded by society, the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) will teach the degree in Science, Technology and Humanities next year under a multidisciplinary model that offers the advantage of studying as a career on the campuses of three Spanish universities : the Autonomous of Madrid, the Autonomous of Barcelona and the Carlos III of Madrid.
Clara Molina, Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Studies UAM, maintains that “the pandemic has made us realize that we are facing increasingly complex challenges to which we can only respond if we join forces with a multidisciplinary perspective. For this reason, the UAM offers degrees that underline the integration of different fields of knowledge, both in the STEM field, with degrees such as the degree in Biomedical Engineering, as well as in other fields of knowledge, with the joint degrees that the UAM teaches with its partners. of the 4U Alliance: the degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, the degree in Sciences or the degree in Science, Technology and Humanities ”.
These new cross-curricular STEM degrees are an opportunity for students and the job market that demands them. This is due, in the opinion of Isabel Gutiérrez Calderón, vice-rector for Studies at the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M), “to its high technical, scientific or quantitative component, but at the same time for providing a solid training in skills and competences that they complete the student's profile and enrich him so that he can face the new challenges posed by the professional and social world; future challenges some of which we cannot yet imagine and which are scientific, political, social and cultural in nature; that is, they are not limited to a single area ”. A training profile that, according to Gutiérrez Calderón, “is much bolder, richer and more complete than the traditional watertight profiles”.
A training, that of STEM students, that improves with multidisciplinary learning, due, in the words of the UC3M Vice-Rector for Studies, “because it forms original profiles of employees who are capable of understanding, evaluating the environment and adapting to changes that not only have to do with updating knowledge, but also with the design of complete solutions ”. Societies change and more rapidly with the incorporation of technology. Faced with this new paradigm, Mariano Ventosa, vice-rector for Innovation and Internationalization at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas, believes that companies face challenges that “require multidisciplinary solutions. Technology is being the engine of new business models, so the role of engineers and technologists is growing, but,Because we are living in a time of great change, it is more necessary than ever to be able to formulate the questions that we are going to solve with technology. And pure STEM talent has a hard time asking some of those questions, and will also need help offering answers to ethical dilemmas in the use of artificial intelligence, for example. "
The importance of high school
The report 'The Spanish University in figures, 2017/2018', prepared by the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE), dedicates its third chapter to university education in the fields of science, mathematics, computing, telecommunications and engineering (STEM). The conclusions derived from this study are that the demand for STEM enrollments is located in the Spanish University System (SUE) five points below the EU average, and there are high global dropout rates ranging from 37.4 % to 49.9%. It also points out that the application for these teachings has experienced a higher drop (-6.1%) than that suffered by all the teachings (-4.45%). To combat the distancing of these races,The document encourages the promotion of science orientation for pre-university students, improves the academic orientation of access to the University and promotes the STEM option, disclosing their levels of labor insertion and access to better incomes.
Víctor López Simo, who has taught STEM subjects in compulsory secondary education and researches STEM education at the university, states that “in elementary school, STEM subjects tend to like a lot, as they are associated with nature, emotion, discovery, experiments, the fascinating phenomena… It is rare that they generate rejection. However, in secondary school there is a leap towards the formalization of science. It is an inheritance of a misinterpretation of the famous LOGSE, where it was understood that it was time to move towards a formal teaching, with a lot of definition, a lot of mathematized calculation, abstract problems, organic and inorganic formulation, vectors, and so on. This very abstract way of presenting STEM generates rejection, especially in girls, who until that moment had seen a STEM closer to their reality. But,It is curious, this is not in line with academic achievements, because, if they are compared, there is no such difference. It's more of a question of perception ”.
In addition, according to López Simo, there are other factors to give up on STEM. One of them would be social construction. For example, the idea that girls are hard-working, but boys are brighter and more creative; and a second element, the referents: it is necessary to generate more female models where the girls can be reflected.