This study forms part of a broader project on professions and professional education within the HSRC Research Programme on Education, Science and Skills Development (ESSD). The research focus of ESSD is wide, spanning three major social domains: the education system, the national system of innovation, and the world of work. The programme is distinctive in that it can conduct research at the interface of these domains to produce comprehensive, integrated and holistic analyses of learners’ pathways through schooling, further and higher education into the labour market and the national system of innovation.