The present study aims to describe the post secondary educational pathways available to young adults in Greece and to explore their choices and transitions to structures of further and higher education, and to alternative pathways promoted by lifelong learning (LLL) policies.

Two conditions have changed the context in which young people make decisions and develop strategies for exploiting possibilities and opportunities. These are the economic crisis, deep recession and unemployment, and European/global discourses promoting an understanding of education as an open-wide space of LLL (Ball, 2009, Grek et al., 2009). European policy, aiming to develop a skilled workforce, defines as its strategic objectives for education accessibility, high participation rates and retention of individuals in education/training structures. Mobility programmes are presented as processes for empowering individuals, encouraging them to become flexible and to take advantage of learning environments, offered in the increasingly interdependent world.

The Greek Post secondary education sector is characterized by recurrent moves towards expansion due to pressures for widening access and participation. This lead to the development of a mass Higher Education system (Universities and Technological Institutions) and the institutionalization of a non-tertiary Vocational Training sector (public/ private Vocational Training Institutions (VTI)). Institutions in the two sectors are highly differentiated in terms of their aims, organizational and knowledge structures, the specializations offered and their links with other education institutions or the job market. Students’ education choices are affected by differences in admission, accreditation and progression opportunities for graduates. VTIs appear to students to be an alternative to H.E. because they offer two-year courses on various specializations, aligned to the needs of the labour market. Furthermore, students’ selection takes place at the local level of the institutions under flexible criteria (e.g. previous education, work experience). Particularly, for young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, VTIs promises to potentially equip them with accredited vocational qualifications and to “protect” them against chronic unemployment and social exclusion (Matousi, 2012, Samaras, 2012). However, crucial for the status of these institutions is the fact that accreditation requires national exams, administered by governmental agencies, and that there are no pathways available to them to continue studying in H.E.

The literature on educational choice and progression is extensive, covering the transitions from compulsory schooling (Ball et al., 2000) to post compulsory/ HE (Reay et al., 2005) and work (Bloomer and Hodkinson, 2000). Critical approaches have problematized the widely used notion of “choice” and its individualistic assumptions, revealing the social nature of students’ decision making processes. These use mainly Bourdieu’s theoretical framework on field, capital and habitus (1998). Furthermore, Bernstein’s theory helps to explore distinctions between choices and learning trajectories that provide the basis for “specialised identities”, enabling individuals to progress, through recovering a coherent “knowledge” past or for “flexible identities”, where people re-form themselves according to external contingencies (Bernstein, 2000). Also, to take account of global discursive resources, new forms of regulation and technologies of the self inscribed in the space of LLL, we draw on Foucault’s conceptualization of power and subjectivity (Foucault, 1988).   

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