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S ummary . An investigation of the present and former career choices of 338 students entering the University of Bradford in 1967 indicated that students of science and engineering had made earlier and mores table decisions than students of social science about their present career intentions. Almost a half of the students of social science had wanted a science‐based career at some stage of their school lives. A half of these had swung away from science by the age of 15 through declining interest; the other half swung after the age of 15 mainly through inadequate performance in the relevant subjects. But these ‘deserters' were of good academic quality in terms of A‐level examination results. The personal influence of teachers, and even ‘bad teaching,’ were not recalled as principal reasons for turning away from science‐based occupations. Among the students of engineering a high proportion were ‘escalators' who had progressively raised their ambitions from machinist or draughtsman to graduate engineer.
Musgrove et al. (Sat,) studied this question.