Student aspirations and higher education realities This study is the sequel to Phase 1 of the Student Choice Behaviour Project, From School to Higher Education? Factors Affecting the Choices of Grade 12 Learners, published in 2002. The main objective of Phase 1 was to examine learners’ choices about entry into higher education institutions and fields of study. Phase 2 traces those learners who actually entered higher education and further education institutions, as well as those who repeated Grade 12, entered the labour market, or became economically inactive, and it investigates the factors that influenced them.