| dc.description.abstract | Background: Over the last few decades students’ expectations towards higher education, including the veterinary studies, have changed significantly. Understanding students’ motivations is a prerequisite for adapting to these changes and helping them with career orientation, especially with the alarming shortages in certain veterinary fields.
Objectives: The aim of our research was to survey the motivational factors of veterinary students' career choice.
Materials and Methods: The present study is based on a questionnaire which was completed by 548 first-year students being enrolled into the Hungarian veterinary medicine course of the University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest (UVMB) between 2016 and 2020.
Results and Discussion: All vet students applied for admission to UVMB as their first choice. The gender ratio did not change significantly over the surveyed years and 73.9% of the respondents were women. Most students started the university within 1-2 years after high school graduation, with an average age of 19.8 years, and came from Budapest and Pest County (altogether 41.8%). Vast majority of the enrolled students was from different urban areas (33.8% from smaller towns, 24.5% from Budapest and 20.8% from county seats) and only 20.8% came from rural circumstances. The most important motivational factors for veterinary education were job prospects, the prestige of profession and the practice-oriented courses, but student life and the good reputation of UVMB were also important. The motivational factors slightly differed between men and women. As regards to the information channels about the vet education and the admission process, almost all vet students visited the governmental and university websites, and they were mostly satisfied with their information content. The university publications, the UVMB Open Day and the educational exhibition were also preferred, but less than half of the respondents visited the latter two. Communication via landline telephone and high school career days were the least preferred ways of information collection. | en_US |
