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Since the end of the 20th century, the digitalization of society, including the educational systems, has been growing exponentially. At the same time, education systems have been evolving towards competency-based assessment. Likewise, at the beginning of this century, the idea of Computational Thinking was resurrected by J. Wing, for solving problems and designing systems using concepts of computer science. Today, we can see how all these questions are taking shape in a new competence, called Computational Thinking, related to others that already exist. In this paper, we have studied the skills of Computational Thinking in university students, focusing on abstraction and its possible relationship with other factors. Results conclude that the students fail in relation to abstraction and in algorithmic thinking. Although the ability of abstraction is not easy to measure, a linear regression analysis has been carried out in order to determine its possible study.

In this world of the digital era, in which we are living, one of the fundamental competences that students must acquire is the competence in Computational Thinking (CT). Although there is no general consensus on a formal definition, there is a general understanding of it as a set of skills and attitudes necessary for the resolution, with or without a computer, of problems that may arise in any area of life. Measuring and evaluating which of the CT skills students have acquired is fundamental, and for this purpose, previously validated measuring instruments must be used. In this study, a previously validated instrument is applied to know if the new students in the Engineering Degrees of the University of the Basque Country have the following skills in CT: Critical Thinking, Algorithmic Thinking, Problem Solving, Cooperativity and Creativity.