The secondary school teacher shortage poses a threat to the quality of education. This shortage is particularly prominent in science subjects (OECD, 2018). In the Netherlands, university students with a school subject-related BA or MA can start a master in education. To aid recruitment efforts and increase enrollment in science teacher education we need to know what the characteristics of science students are who consider a teaching career and of those who do not. Therefore, we investigated whether we could distinguish groups of science students based on their career aspirations (e.g., industry, research, secondary school teaching). Furthermore, we tested whether and how these groups differed regarding background characteristics (e.g., gender and field of study) and interests. We focused on interests as these greatly influence someone’s career choice according to social-cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). Following Holland’s career theory (1997), we focused on six interests: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Teachers score very high on social interest (e.g., Henoch, 2015). 905 science bachelor and master students at three Dutch universities (65% male) completed an online questionnaire about their career aspirations (measured on a five-point scale) and interests (based on Putz, 2011). To identify groups among the respondents based on their career aspirations we conducted latent profile analysis in Mplus. Group differences were investigated by ANOVA with post hoc tests. We identified five groups. Groups were named after the sector(s) that had the highest aspiration scores in that group: (1) industry/entrepreneurship (20% of sample); (2) research (28%); (3) industry (26% of sample); (4) undecided (no strong preferences); (5) research/communication/teaching (12%). In the groups ‘undecided’ and ‘research/communication/teaching’ (hereinafter referred to as ‘teaching groups’), the aspiration to become a secondary school teacher was moderate respectively substantial. Hence, in these groups we can find potential teachers. However, teaching competes with other careers: In the ‘undecided’ group, students had moderate aspirations in many sectors and in the ‘re-search/communication/teaching’ group, students’ aspirations for a career in research or in science communication were high. Regarding background characteristics, female and biology students (compared to for example physics and mathematics students) were overrepresented in the teaching groups. The teaching groups had significantly higher social interest than the other groups, which corresponds to the interest profile of teachers. Teacher education recruitments effort should be targeted at these potential teachers and could emphasise the social nature of the teaching profession.

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