Mayors vs. STEM: The sad story of a big success in increasing STEM vocations

The lack of interest for Stem degrees among young students is one of the main problems discussed around the STEM acronym. Although this problem can be addressed from many different point of views, we present in this paper the experience gained over the past ten years in a project that has achieved a big increase in STEM degrees enrollments. The project applies a long-term approach that allows young students to develop their skills over several years, and has achieved a large increase in the rate of STEM degrees enrollment compared to the rates in the region in which it is applied; a rate increase that to the best of our knowledge has never been reported for any STEM initiativeThis paper discusses the unique approach the project applies, and presents and analyzes the outcome of 100 students who attended the project over several years. The analysis focuses on decisions made regarding the university, the degrees chosen, but also discusses results for those students that are still attending middle and high school. Results obtained are compared with a preliminary analysis performed a couple of years ago, and demonstrates the usefulness of the approachUnfortunately, and despite the remarkable results obtained, we still find difficulties for extending the model among towns in the region that are not part of the project yet. We provide data showing that policy makers do not pay enough attention to this problem in the area where the project is deployed, and thus we show where the main problem for extending STEM initiatives is found.