Choice of Study and Profession by Greek Secondary Education Students: A Study of the Factors Influencing Their Choices

Nowadays, students are required to make some decisions at quite a young age, first of all, regarding their education, followed by a series of career decisions that will be critical for them later in life. Therefore, we attempted to investigate the social and personal factors that affect students in making their education and career related decisions, with a focus on students attending the country's high schools.In the first part, which is the theoretical part, the concepts of professional development, maturity, and career choice are presented. After that, the factors are presented that determine both the education and career related decisions of students. In specific, various personal factors are analyzed; for example, biological factors, such as gender, physical characteristics, aptitudes, etc. In addition, acquired factors, such as skills, values, interests, and so on, are presented.The second part of the article follows, which is the research part. In order to investigate the factors that affect adolescents in their education and career related decisions, qualitative research was conducted. More specifically, 35 interviews were taken from students attending the 3rd Grade of High School, which were analyzed through qualitative content analysis. Compared to earlier research, where there was direct and strong involvement of parents in the decisions made by young people, nowadays, there is evidence of young people's effort to differentiate from their parents' beliefs, and become independent from the family environment. As a final word, in the end of the article, the conclusions of our research will be listed.