Students’ interest development prior, during, and after the transition to a higher education programme

Abstract

This dissertation has provided insight into how students’ interests develop prior, during, and after them making a higher education programme choice. Interests develop, before students make a choice, not only through them explicitly deciding which interests are related to their personal goals or identity, but also less explicit, as interests develop through their routines and through the different practices they participate in.

During students’ higher education programme choice, it was found that students needed to weigh their multiple interests in light of future programmes to come to a decision on which programme they would like to pursue. In this weighing process, it was found that students’ interests were not stable and students could even develop new interests based on their exploration of programmes.

After students enrolled in higher education, it was found that students that enrolled in a broad bachelor programme developed more diverse, broad interests over time, while students that enrolled in a small bachelor programme developed more focused, specialized interests over time. This suggests that the curriculum of a higher education programme can facilitate students’ interest development into more broad or focused directions.

This dissertation has thereby shown that students’ interests continuously develop throughout their daily life and that this dynamic development needs to be acknowledged more in both interest development theory and higher education programme choice theory. Moreover, counsellors that support students in their higher education programme choice process should be aware that students’ interests are not stable throughout this process, but rather keep developing over time.