The Recombining of Routes in French Universities in the Light of Professional Choices

This article analyses the development of professional pathways in higher education in France beginning with the students' choices of orientation. In centring themselves on the trajectories of females in the various paths of higher education, it is a question of analysing the place of these professional pathways in the choices of orientation and the construction of scholarly and professional projects. The article shows that the professional choice does not mobilize the same social logics of orientation on the level of the first and second university cycles. If the parents' social position and the secondary education are determinant in the choice of orientation at the entry into higher education, the project and the relationship to the future tend to take a dominating place beginning with the master's. Adapted from the source document.