Change in demand for health-related undergraduate studies in Spain during 2015–2021: a temporal series study

INTRODUCTION: The expansion of higher education is a worldwide phenomenon. To our knowledge, there are no studies analyzing the trends in demands of enrollment in health-related studies in Spain. Therefore, the objective was to analyze the change in demand (the number of requests for enrollment divided by the number of offered places) for undergraduate health-related studies in Spain during the period 2015–2021 as well as compare the change by region in the pre (2015–2019) and pandemic (2020–2021) period. METHODS: This is an observational (ecological type) study with temporal series analyses using data from public (non-for-profit) higher education institutions from the Integrated University Information System. For the analysis by region, we calculated the demand of all twelve undergraduate health-related degrees and the percentages of change between both periods using the Wilcoxon test. The Joinpoint Regression program was used to analyze the trends in demand for each degree during the 7-year period. RESULTS: Significant (p < 0.001) increases in demand during the pandemic period were observed in all regions. During the pandemic, medicine, biomedicine, nursing, odontology and pharmacy presented a higher demand in comparison with data collected before the pandemic started. In contrast, this pattern was not confirmed in the following cases: physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry, psychology, social work, human nutrition and dietetics. By regions, Navarra, Asturias, and La Rioja presented the most drastic changes. In regions with the biggest number of universities, such as Catalonia, Andalusia and Madrid, the change observed was smaller.