The research workshop will present results from an ongoing international research project titled: "Students as 'Journeymen' between the communities of education and work". The project has been running for two years and collects empirical data from freshmen and senior students as well as from novices in their first year of professional work. Students in three university programmes in each of the four participating universities have been interviewed about their conceptions of learning, knowledge, competence and moral/societal responsibilites.The research workshop will present and discuss results from the student's interviews and make comparisions between their programmes as well as between countries. The over-arching question in this project is:How do students and novices in the workplace construe their university studies and their professional identity - and the relationship between these contexts? The research perspective rests on the assumption that there is a mutual interplay between individuals and the collectives that shapes, reproduces, or reshapes the discourses of the different communities. To accomplish such a description, the following three empirical questions have to be answered:1. What discourses can be discerned in education and working life as significant for the students and the novices in their construction of studies?2. Which structural/material/cultural conditions contribute to those discourses?3. What strategies do students and novices apply in order to cope with knowledge formation - learning in studies and work?Within the recent discourse of the researchers on higher education and work life far ranging options are sometimes put on the agenda. Far away from the traditional persuit of knowledge for its own sake, afterall the spectrum entails the questions whether higher education should focus on the enhancement of students' knowledge and on the cultivation of their personality or on direct preparation for the world of work. Moreover, the economic perspective is by no means predominantly valid. Admittedly, it is often asked whether studies should "prepare for a wide range of occupation or (..) be highly specialised." (Teichler 1999, 170). But even within the employment perspective the question is raised whether higher education should deliver the competencies demanded by the employment system or should prepare students to become active agents of innovation and change in the world of work.In the research workshop we want to emphasise the construction of an identity as a student. The empirical data comprise interviews with freshmen and senior students in a liberal arts programme, political science, and one professional programme, psychology. The participating countries will report on the national data on this part of the project. A panel discussion on the comparative international aspects of these issues will conclude the session.