ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the transition from higher education to working life in three different study programmes at Linkoping University: Political Science, Psychology and Mechanical Engineering. The majority of students/novices are in the age span of 24–26. The age of the informants from the Psychology programme varies between 24 and 46 years; more than half of them are between 24 and 26 years of age. The awareness of pluralism, that is the existence of competing theoretical schools of psychology and the application of these in clinical practice, stands out as the most important feature of the novices' answers to the questions about what kind of knowledge is acquired in the educational programme. The novice engineers describe their work using the words calculating and constructing. Engineering novices achieve a formal legitimacy by passing the programme, which is an indicator of being able to learn fast and work hard, and thus functions as a door opener to the labour market.
