Choices and Wayfaring in Higher Education: Bachelor students’ movements between individual perspectives and institutional constraints

Within higher education research, the topic of choosing has mainly concerned young peoples’ choices of whether or not to enter higher education and their choice of study programme. However, a study programme is often not a fixed package. Nevertheless, choices within higher education has received comparably little attention. This study unpacks second-year students’ experiences of choosing, and it explores how they navigate these choices. Drawing on empirical material from ethnographic fieldwork at three bachelor programmes, we found that students experience both opportunities and constraints in navigating higher education choices. Inspired by Ingold (2015; 2016) we suggest a theoretical perspective on choice as wayfaring. We found, that navigating through higher education contains both ambiguities and challenges for students, who learn as they go along, discover new paths and thus change direction as they move through the landscape of higher education. We argue that making choices in this sense is an integral part of being a student and an inherent part of what it means to study.