As schools and universities prepare for admissions in the 2026–2027 academic year, one question remains open: what will students choose?
Although we cannot yet determine how preferences will shift in the coming cycle, recent data from Spain and France offer useful signals. Patterns from the previous admissions round reveal not only disciplinary preferences but also how institutional structures shape educational demand.
Across both countries, students tend to favour fields perceived as professionally reliable. Health-related programmes dominate — through PASS in France and through highly competitive entry thresholds in Spain — while Law, Psychology, Business/Economics and STEM disciplines continue to attract sustained demand.
Yet the architecture of each national system significantly shapes how these preferences manifest.
France’s centralised platform, Parcoursup, makes student choices nationally visible and creates strong concentration effects. PASS applications, for instance, dwarf most other pathways, reinforcing national hierarchies of prestige and selectivity.
Spain’s decentralised admissions model, by contrast, spreads demand across autonomous regions and institutions. Programme-level competition is increasingly evident, with double degrees and engineering pathways often demanding particularly high entry thresholds. Rather than a single national hierarchy, differentiation is driven by institutional reputation and programme design.
Three observations follow.
1. Employment rationality.
Students gravitate towards fields with clear labour market signals — health, law, engineering, and business. Even before entering university, young people are acutely aware of economic uncertainty and future employability.
2. STEM prestige on the rise.
Mathematics, engineering and data-related pathways increasingly attract high-performing students. Technological transformation appears not to deter applicants but to reinforce the perceived value of quantitative and technical disciplines.
3. Systems shape demand.
Centralisation reinforces national hierarchies (France), whereas decentralisation fosters institutional competition and programme differentiation (Spain). The same generational concerns are filtered through distinct structural incentives.
Taken together, these patterns offer insight into how young Europeans imagine their economic futures in a context shaped by artificial intelligence, demographic pressures and evolving labour markets. Preferences are not merely academic; they reflect broader perceptions of security, prestige and opportunity.