Engineering Students Decision-Making Process: The Role of Aspirations

This paper analyses the influence of external factors which affect the decision-making process in the selection of telecommunications engineering studies. Particularly, we have studied the influence of factors related to the generation of expectations about the studies. A survey was conducted on a sample of 701 male and female telecommunications engineering students. The results show the existence of a direct correlation between the choice of telecommunications studies and the prospects of finding a job more easily, getting higher salaries and more prestige. The study shows low vocational orientation for the engineering area selected, but a high vocational orientation for engineering in general.