1. Dropout, particularly in the transition from Upper Secondary to Higher Education (HE), meaning a loss of human capital investment is a serious problem, mainly in countries like Portugal where investment in human capital is crucial for fostering economic growth.

In Portugal this loss in the transition trajectory leads to a number of  Higher Education graduates still far below European average levels, 28,2% against 32,5% in 2020 (PORDATA), and the Millenium Sustainable Goals (Goal 4) subscribed by Portugal.

In our previous research we looked at evidence about how a diversity of factors, age, sex, educational and economic characteristics of the family of origin, previous school failure, own situation towards employment, are responsible for dropout or delay in Higher Education enrollment. And how the weight of these factors on dropout decision vary with economic cycle.

Literature survey shows that expectations\motivation are important factors in the decision making process related to transition to Higher Education after the socio economic ones like budget constrains to move to Higher Education and\or will to earn their own money.

The OCDE PISA RESULTS 2015 (OECD 2017) emphasizes that expectations and motivation matter in the transition to Higher Education. This study showed that performance during Upper Secondary trajectory determines expectations and motivation. It also found that parents and peers expectations have impact on students’ones as well as age, sex, type of course followed in Upper Secondary in line with studies from Heagney & Benson 2017; Pinxten et al 2014; Brandle 2016; Mitchall & Jaegaer 2018; Goldrick-Rab et al (2007).

The positive influence of anticipation and temporal consistency of expectations is also corroborated by Sá e Tavares (2017), Britton et al (2019) and Toledo & Martinez (2018); The positive influence of motivation is mentioned as decisive by several authors [Martinez & Toledo (2018),  Schlesinger, Cervera & Pérez-Cabañero (2016)].

Mäkinen et al (2004) classify students in three groups: study oriented, labor market oriented and non-committed.

Here, our aim is two folded, study the impact of economic cycle on student’s expectations\motivation regarding transition from Upper Secondary to Higher Education and changes in students expectations/motivation from the beginning of Upper Secondary degree till 14 months after Upper Secondary graduation, namely, differences among those who followed science humanistic and VET courses.

We want to find answers to the following research questions:

-         How did expectations\motivation change from Upper secondary enrolment (10^th standard) to 14 months after Upper Secondary graduation?

-         Did the economic crisis from 2008 to 2015 in Portugal and the recovery that followed it from 2017 onwards change student’s expectations?

We will use data bases collected by the Statistic Department of the Ministry of Education trough surveys launched at the beginning and end of Upper Secondary and fourteen months after the end of Upper Secondary. These surveys allow us to follow student’s school trajectory from Upper Secondary enrolment until the transition to Higher Education. Because we want to study the impact of economic cycle on expectations we have data for 2007-2010, 2010-2014 and 2016-2019. We focus on expectations about further schooling after Upper Secondary graduation. We merged the three databases into one who has information about thousands of youngsters and more than 1000 variables covering expectations about further schooling and the type of studies to do, reasons for not proceeding studies after Upper Secondary graduation and expected professional trajectories in each of the two moments of school trajectory and after graduation. We will use multi variable analysis, ACP and cluster analysis, contingency and discriminant analysis.

We expect to confirm that teenagers’ expectations/motivation about HE enrolment were set far before Upper Secondary graduation and students become surer along their school trajectory that they will either proceed their studies or dropout after Upper Secondary graduation. However at an individual level, expectations change with age, sex, previous school trajectory, family socioeconomic background own employment etc… Based on individual data, we also expect to confirm the hypothesis that mismatch between expectations\motivation and reality is a main factor in the decision making process concerning transition between Upper Secondary and Higher Education both during the crisis and after the economic cycle reverted. We didn’t expect the weight of this factor to have decreased significantly between the two periods.

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