Mind the Gap. Why Do Technical Alumni Stay in the Technical Sector

This study seeks to explore why around 40% of the alumni of technical degree programmes in higher education in the Netherlands leave the technical sector in spite of the high number of technical vacancies available. The study is part of a larger project called Mind the Gap that explores professional identity as a constellation that provides a key to understanding the career choices of technical alumni, assuming that a stronger and deeper professional identity as an engineer leads to stronger commitment to the engineering profession. Through life history interviews with eight male engineering alumni from a university and a university of applied sciences who stayed in the technical sector, a contextualisation for their choices in study and career is provided. Results indicate that there are two trajectories the alumni went through, one being a more applied and focused engineering trajectory, the other being a more theoretical trajectory where engineering was one of the options amidst a number of other technical and less technical options. Further research into life histories of women and those who left the technical sector, male and female is foreseen.