Freshmen’s and Seniors’ thoughts about Education, Professional identity and Work

This paper is part of a comparative European research project funded by the European Commission and concentrating on the mediation of university cultures and work cultures as experienced by students in liberal art and professional programmes. The programmes selected are psychology, political science and mechanical engineering. The focus of this particular paper is Swedish students’ experiences of the relevance of the studies for the professional work, the level of intensity regarding the workload; the engagement in their studies; the feeling of being visible to the teachers and, finally, the extent to which they develop a professional identity. The results are based on thematic cross-sectional interview data gathered at the beginning and at the end of the programmes and subsequently subjected to qualitative analysis. The feeling of being prepared for future professional work varies between students in the various programmes. The students of psychology seem to feel rather well prepared, even though they still struggle to understand the nature of psychological theoretical knowledge. The political science students have a very vague notion of what political scientists do when they work. Engineering students still express doubts about their professional identity at the end of the programme and the relationship between the university studies and work is not self-evident.