Career choices : a study of the motives among nurse- and constructionengineerstudents for higher education

Different career preferences of men and women seems to manifest itself in the choices of educational programs. This is especially true in higher education. This study inquires the horizontal sex segregation where women and men tend to choose educations of different characteristics; women tend to be found in the health welfare department whereas men are to be found in the technology section. The intention of this study is to explore the reasoning and motives that students experience regarding their educational choices. The aim is also to distinguish similarities and differences between the respondents. Since the purpose of this study has been to explore experiences and meanings of students educational choices the study used an abductive reasoning based on eight semi-structured interviews with students from vocational educations including both women and men. The theoretical framework is based on Bourdieu’s (1989, 1993) theory regarding habitus as well as Skeggs (2000) gender theory and in addition to this, earlier research in the area. The result of the interviews show four thematic areas of students reasoning and motives that has had an impact in their career choice process; instrumental stance, limitations, incitements and external influences. The main findings are that the students have an instrumental attitude towards the content of the education and are restricted by their habitus, gender and horizon for action. The male respondents seems to make their choice based on interest unlike the females who seems to choose something familiar, based on a desire to help others. Our findings also indicates that the respondents closest relatives seems to have an impact on the choices being made