The popularity of various fields of education among men and women in European Union countries

Abstract

The twenty-first century is a time of enormous educational expansion in European Union countries, especially in the area of mass higher education. There is a great diversity of educational fields in each member state at all three levels of higher education. This diversity is a positive phenomenon, because it favours the formation of a creative economy. The multiplicity of disciplines enables the creation of innovations that use knowledge from many, seemingly quite distant fields. There are a number of factors influencing a given person’s choice of one such field of education over another. In this article, it is examined whether gender is one of the important factors. In each of the European Union countries, ten fields and all three levels of higher education are analysed. The study is based on data from the Eurostat database covering the years 2013-2015.