Highest proportion of graduates in science and engineering come from Sweden, Ireland and France, finds Eurostat survey
New Eurostat statistics for 2001 show that in the EU, 26 per cent of the two million new university graduates studied science and/or engineering. Sweden, Ireland and France had the highest percentage of those graduates, with over 30 per cent each. In comparison, in the acceding countries, the number of 2001 graduates with a science or engineering degree averaged 13 per cent out of a total of 630 000 students. The survey showed that Slovakia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic recorded the highest values among the ten countries. In both the EU and the acceding countries, engineering proved more popular than science, with a notable exception in the UK and Ireland. In the EU, 11 per cent of graduates in 2001 had studied science, while 15 per cent had chosen engineering, manufacturing and construction. The statistics for the acceding countries were four per cent and nine per cent respectively. The report also showed that, despite the fact that in all the countries observed there are more women than men in tertiary education, women remain under-represented in the science and engineering fields. This is not the case, however in Portugal, Italy, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, where, in 2001, the proportion of women ranged from 52 per cent to 59 per cent. The survey also showed that the proportion of women graduates is higher in the acceding countries than in the EU for both science (48 per cent compared to 41 per cent) and engineering (26 per cent and 21 per cent).