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The shortfall of young people, particularly women, in the field of science, mathematics and engineering (SME) has been shown in many national studies. Schreiner and Sjoberg (2007) indicated that boys outnumber girls in physics and engineering studies, while the gender balance is shifted towards the girls in studies including medicine, veterinary medicine, environmental science and biology. This paper sets out to explore the issues, which are relevant to understanding these gender differences and the factors affecting students' career choices. The instrument called 'Vilje-con-valg' was used to obtain data from 1635 first year students from eight different departments - mechanical, civil, computer, electrical-electronics, industrial, chemical, environmental and food engineering at 21 universities in Turkey. The results of this study showed that (i) most of the students decided on career options during their last grade level in high school or after graduation from high school, (ii) students were influenced by the jobs that they were interested in; their talents and abilities that they wanted to use and job prospects after graduation, (iii) internet, popular scientific magazines, books and movies were important factors in choosing their careers and (iv) the creativity and independence in the jobs are important considerations that influence career decisions.

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The aim of present study was two-fold: (1) to determine university students’ familiarity and understandings of ‘sustainable development’; and (2) to examine their attitudes toward sustainable development, environmental values, and their behaviors toward sustainable life styles. The data collected by on-line administration of a questionnaire to 958 university students during February-June of 2008 were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. The results reflected that majority of the participants declared themselves familiar with the term of sustainable development, but they could not develop a sound understanding as a holistic concept. It was also found that university students had favorable attitudes toward sustainable development and intrinsic values toward the environment. However, these participants did not readily take some radical actions in order to create a more sustainable future.

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