Becoming Young or Student: A Developmental Challenge

Abstract

Placing the higher education student in a developmental path that mediates between adolescence and adulthood, the identity construction is assumed as a critical developmental task. Focusing the analysis on the psychosocial development of the young adult and using, as a framework of theoretical reading, the conceptualization of the student craft put forward by Perrenoud (1995) and developed by Amado‑Tavares (2008), to apply it to the higher education arena, this paper, through the analysis of the discourse of higher education students, intends to reflect on the construction of the identity of the student that attends this level of education. Thus, the aim is to realize whether attending higher education institutions may be conceptualized as the exercise of a profession. The results confirm that attending higher education institutions works, in practice, as the exercise of a profession: the student’s profession.