Abstract This study analyzes cognitive and emotional empathy in students who started their training at the Education Science Faculty of the Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia. The sample was formed by 317 students enrolled in the study programs of Preschool, Plastic Arts, Natural Sciences, Physical Education, Philosophy, Computer Science, Foreign Languages, Mathematics, Music, Psychopedagogy, and Social Sciences. The Cognitive and Affective Empathy Scale (TECA for its Spanish initials) was used to collect data. Both the reliability of TECA and its construct validity were determined for this sample. Participants obtained better results in the cognitive dimension, the highest scores additionally corresponding to the emotional understanding scale. As far as gender is concerned, women outperformed men in their scores, especially in the two affective dimension scales. Differences also appeared according to age, scores growing as age increased. With regard to the training program in which students were enrolled, significant contrasts were identified in perspective adoption and empathic stress. Finally, a suggestion is made about the need for teacher training curricula to envisage empathy development for the purpose of strengthening the emotional skills of future lecturers.