Higher education students’ aspirations for their post-university lives: evidence from six European nations

Abstract

While there is now a relatively large literature on young people's aspirations with respect to their transitions from compulsory schooling, the body of work on the aspirations of those within higher education is rather less well-developed. This article draws on data from undergraduate students in six European countries to explore their hopes for their post-university lives. It demonstrates that although aspirations for employment were discussed most frequently, noneconomic plans and desires were also important. Moreover, despite significant commonalities across the six nations, aspirations were also differentiated, to some extent at least, by national context, institutional setting and subject of study.

Constructing the Higher Education Student

“…First, according to students, humanities and social science courses were widely seen as being 'useless' and 'pointless' because they were not thought to lead to employment, or, at least, not to good careers (see also Brooks et al, 2021b). Many students discussed how, for this reason, prior to entering HE they had received advice from family, friends and their school career guidance counsellors to study a STEM subject, and had been strongly discouraged from studying humanities or social science subjects.…”