On the impact of STEM sustained actions on the future of young students.
This paper presents a preliminary analysis on the impact of Municipal Schools of Young Scientists (MSYS) project on young students' decisions regarding their university studies. MSYS, and the pilot project that preceded it, has been operating in Extremadura for more than six years, and some of the students have already reached the age to access university studies. Although not all of them have attended MSYS all these years, we have performed a preliminary analysis that considers what they are studying, if they do, today.This paper presents data about those first years of MSYS that are then compared with the population of young people who have completed compulsory schooling in Spain, and particularly in Extremadura, Spanish region where the project is developed. The data collected shows evidence of a remarkable impact on students interests around STEM areas: an increase of 21 points on the average number of students studying a STEM university degree is reported, when compared with both the population in Spain and Extremadura.Although data obtained are still preliminary to establish a causal relationship, the correlation shows the interest of the approach, with an improvement on all of the measured values. In any case, we think the analysis of the project reported will be useful to design new sustained STEM actions in the future.We hope this results will encourage local administrations and families to continue supporting the project in the next decade.