Approaches to the Identification of STEM competencies in European University Systems

The readySTEMgo project is a collaboration between six European universities: KU Leuven (Belgium), Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH – Germany), University of Žilina (UniZa – Slovakia), Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME – Hungary), University of Birmingham (UK), and Aalto University (Finland). The prime objective of the project is to identify students with an increased drop-out risk before the start or throughout the course of the first -year in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) study programmes. Before providing an overview of the most salient project findings, we will first address some key issues involved in identifying key entry requirements for first-year science and engineering students in a European framework. A number of institutional (e.g., university entry requirements & secondary school curricula) and diagnostic (e.g., available tests) elements complicate a uniform approach in a diverse European consortium. Against this background, we present the most essential key competences followed by a detailed overview of a number of interventions aimed at risk students in the different institutions.