Educational expectations in Higher Education (HE) are students’ aspirations and desires about what they hope to achieve during their academic life. Educational expectations are cognitive and motivational, so they represent a key element for adaptation to the university context and the decision to prolong studies (Cabrera et al., 1993; Tinto, 1993; Braxton et al., 2014). They constitute the mental foundations of everyday engagement, which guides student behavior inside and outside educational institutions toward higher-order educational goals such as high school or college graduation (Lorenz et al., 2020). Educational expectations represent the lower or realistic limit of a continuum of educational alternatives ordered from a lower to a higher level of difficulty where aspirations are at the upper or idealistic limit. Along this continuum, students make decisions about educational alternatives based on their potential for fulfillment and their personal value for the students (Zimmermann, 2020). Students adapt and revise their expectations in a continuous Bayesian updating process (Morgan, 2005) in response to new information received or educational experiences. Thus, educational expectations provide early insight into students’ subjective perceptions of opportunities and constraints to further study (Anders, 2017).

The development of the continuum, represented by educational expectations and aspirations, requires time and mental maturity. Children broaden their knowledge of the social structure and their position in it through the family, the peer group, and the school, and later on, as youths, they become aware of their potential, and of the classification of occupations according to their prestige, and they recognize the interaction between income, occupation, and educational level (Gottfredson, 2002). Although the students must evolve to discover their desired place in society and to be able to distinguish between ideal or real aspirations (expectations), youth is where a potentially realizable educational choice is made throughout their educational trajectory (Zimmermann, 2020). These predictions or expectations, which may be more or less idealized or realistic, influence behavior: if it occurs, the planned behavior will be performed in line with the interpretation of the situation. This influence occurs by translating experiences, knowledge, attitudes, motivations, and beliefs into academic actions (Kuh et al., 2005). Understanding one’s subsequent behavior grants an adaptive role to expectations that may or may not match the attainment of students’ desires and hopes.

In the context of HE, a student’s career choice is a crucial moment that will have a high impact on their professional life and future achievements (Ahmed et al., 2017). An appropriate career choice will make the student feel satisfied and motivated, whereas an inappropriate career choice can lead to the abandonment of their studies (Rodríguez-Muñiz et al., 2019). As for the change of major subject, one of the aspects that differentiate students who change from those who do not is that the former attribute less primacy to their interests and skills when choosing a course (Diniz and Almeida, 2007). On another hand, students’ motivation and positive expectations toward studies (educational expectations) are variables that promote academic permanence and success (Castillo-Sánchez et al., 2020).

There are various ways of classifying the determinants of career choice that condition success or failure: individual and contextual (Zacher et al., 2019); internal (personal characteristics, interests: Päßler and Hell, 2012; Zafar, 2013) and external (socioeconomic background: Ma, 2009; Parker et al., 2012). In addition, a third type, interpersonal determinants, is related to the influence of mediating agents (parental support, peer influence, and the interaction with teachers and other educators: Whiston and Keller, 2004; Fouad et al., 2010; Lerkkanen et al., 2012). These classifications are an anchor in the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; Lent et al., 1994). Among the determinants of career choice, the internal determinants seem to be the most important for the choice of major subjects in both genders (Päßler and Hell, 2012; Zafar, 2013).

From the interaction of the set of internal, external, and contextual factors, students obtain various types of information that consolidate into a series of perceptions about the curriculum of the chosen degree program. These perceptions or “a priori expectations” will be modified over time, based on the actual knowledge of the studies acquired while pursuing the degree (Navarro and Soler, 2014), and will determine whether or not the career choice was appropriate (Dias, 2011). Thus, a close relationship between determinants of career choice and educational expectations can be assumed.

Current studies link internal determinants of career choice with aspirations and expectations of job satisfaction, development of autonomy and self-efficacy, and enhancement of learning experiences, in addition to deepening of knowledge in the area of interest (Eren, 2017; McLean et al., 2019). External determinants of career choice relate to aspirations and expectations associated with pursuing a particular profession that ensures appropriate financial remuneration, job security, and promotion opportunities (Akosah-Twumasi et al., 2018). Parents, teachers, and friends also play a relevant role in consolidating college students’ expectations, especially those linked to opportunities for socialization in that context (Akosah-Twumasi et al., 2018; Lorenz et al., 2020) and those related to satisfying the desires of others (Guan et al., 2015).

The main objective of this study is to test a predictive model between determinants of major choice (DMC) and academic expectations (AEs) of first-year university students, analyzing their gender invariance.

From a multifactorial conception of AEs, they were grouped into seven factors related to future employability, personal and social development, student mobility, political/citizen engagement, social pressure, quality of education, and social interaction. These factors were analyzed considering country (Deaño et al., 2015) and country and gender (Diniz et al., 2018), resulting in a cross-cultural validation of a questionnaire to assess them (Almeida et al., 2018), which was used in this study. The DMC considered in this study involves the influence of personal characteristics (PCs) and mediator agents (MAs). We used six items retrieved from the Determinants of Major Choice Scale (Diniz, 2008).

Taking into account the target variables and the instruments used for their operationalization, as a first hypothesis, we expected that their psychometric properties would allow testing a prediction model between the DMC and the factors of expectations. Furthermore, considering the variability and number of factors that affect the DMC and AEs, country and gender were introduced as variables to be considered in the study.

As a second hypothesis, we conjectured that the DMC factors would have a significant impact on the factors of expectations. To our knowledge, no research has considered both types of constructs conjointly through a prediction model while considering gender, a key variable of major selection (Parker et al., 2012). The exploration of the DMC’s impact on AEs through a multivariate regression model with latent variables across gender can shed light on these relationships.

With this study, we intended to examine the predictive relationships between DMC and AEs of first-year university students across gender. To pursue this goal, we tested a multivariate regression model of the effect of PC and MA, as determinants of major choice (DMC), on APQ’s 7-factors AEs with large samples of Spanish and Portuguese students.

First, we wanted to determine the model’s possible equivalence across countries and gender and whether its factors would have adequate psychometric properties by country and gender. Similarly, in a two-step approach (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988; Jöreskog and Sörbom, 1993), before testing this regression model, we tested its oblique model counterpart, which was well fitted and denoted full invariance by country and gender, with all the nine factors presenting acceptable psychometric properties (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994). In this process, we also observed that the two model predictors (PCs and MAs) were independent, which allows a clear interpretation of their relationships with the criteria (AEs). Concerning the gender differences in the factor means of the model predictors, we found that women attribute more importance to the PCs for a major choice than men, similar to Nadelson et al. (2013) results. By contrast, the importance of MAs for a major choice does not differentiate between women and men, contradicting the belief that women attribute more importance to MAs than men do (e.g., Päßler and Hell, 2012; Sojkin et al., 2012). This result can be a by-product of the lack of importance attributed by college students to external influences in their decision to pursue HE (Nadelson et al., 2013), reflected in the tendency for career choices in women to be increasingly dispersed and more similar to those of men (Montmarquette et al., 2002; Ma, 2009; Chang and ChangTzeng, 2020). Second, we conjectured that DMC would have a significant impact on the factors of expectations across gender. The invariance test of the multivariate regression model across gender indicated that it was well-fitted to data and revealed an equivalence of slopes (Jöreskog and Sörbom, 1993) between women and men. As a consequence, a unique interpretation of its predictive relationships for both genders is allowed. Traditionally and currently, numerous studies corroborate gender differences in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students related to career choice motives and students’ educational expectations (Su and Rounds, 2015; Trusz, 2020). Nevertheless, we can speculate that this equivalence of slopes between genders occurs in our study because most of the sample is made up of students from degrees belonging to the social sciences and humanities (60%). On the other hand, it seems that family background and previous learning experiences, among others, play a much more important role in career choice and the formation of AEs than gender (Babarović, 2021). Moreover, educational institutions’ increasing efforts to homogenize formative programs and methodologies minimize gender inequalities (Babarović, 2021; World Economic Forum, 2021).

The equivalent slopes for gender revealed statistically significant predictive relationships of PCs and MAs on six and five of the seven AEs, respectively. Consistent with other studies, we found that PCs predicted AEs related to PEC, PSD (Nyamwange, 2016; Eren, 2017; McLean et al., 2019), and TE (Akosah-Twumasi et al., 2018) more strongly than those related to QE, SI, and SM. Furthermore, PCs did not predict SP, implying that accomplishing the expectations of others or finishing the degree within a given time frame seems to take a back seat to the primacy of students’ self-interests (Brahm et al., 2017).

Along with evidence from some other studies, we also found that MAs’ prediction of AEs, compared to PCs, was higher in SP (Guan et al., 2015) and SI (Akosah-Twumasi et al., 2018; Lorenz et al., 2020) and lower in PEC and SM. No relationship was found between TE and PSD. This may be because the content of the items of these EAs, as presented in the APQ, refer to personal evaluations of access to a job (good job, professional success) and PCs (autonomy, self-confidence). TE and PSD were better predicted by PCs, as in other studies (Navarro and Soler, 2014; Rodríguez-Muñiz et al., 2019).

Overall, we can state, as an educated guess, that students who choose HE studies according to their PCs form AEs based on the possibility of performing experiences and activities in that environment that give them the opportunity to help others to improve and enhance personal skills and achieve a successful professional future. On the other hand, students who base their choice of HE studies more on the influence of MAs expect to find experiences of social interaction in HE and to achieve an academic performance consistent with others’ expectations.

Some theoretical implications can be derived from the findings of this study. First, as far as we know, there are no studies in which the DMC and AEs have been explored conjointly across gender. The multivariate regression model studied offers the opportunity to link these two key elements for academic persistence and success in HE (Bargmann et al., 2021; Eren & Rakıcıoğlu-Söylemez, 2021). It also allows interpretations in tune with Tinto (1993) attrition theory and with those made in the self-determination theory’s studies on the importance of personal value-interest and expectations in career choice and student retention (Duchatelet and Donche, 2019; Eccles and Wigfield, 2020; Ryan and Deci, 2020; Schnettler et al., 2020).

Moreover, within our attempt to link career and academic psychological constructs, the finding that the DMCs’ effect on AEs is equivalent across gender points to an indistinct gender role in the influence of personal and contextual variables of career choice on AEs among first-year university students.

On a practical level, educational institutions could adjust their intervention programs to favor the retention and permanence of students (Bergmark et al., 2018) who have chosen a career to some degree based on their PCs or MAs, knowing what each group expects from HE. Moreover, based on the effect size results, the majority of the effects of PCs and MAs on AEs were of medium size, indicating that these two DMCs are relevant in practical terms when intervening on AEs. We also note that, according to study results, this DMC relevance is independent of gender. However, it seems that no practical implications of PCs and MAs on SM and SI should be considered, as small effect sizes emerged for these relationships. First-year students vaguely represent these AEs because of their lack of knowledge of the new organizational structure and the opportunities to achieve them in their HE studies (Trautwein and Bosse, 2017). In contrast, we can conjecture that they are a kind of AEs that neither the students nor their significant social environment found relevant for the choice and development of an HE career.

These types of studies can help HE institutions to be more attentive to the students they welcome, to create the necessary conditions for them to have experiences matching their interests and expectations, identify and model adequately planned behaviors that promote academic adaptation and persistence (Dewberry and Jackson, 2018).

Despite the cautions to avoid threats to the study’s internal validity, for example, model estimation and testing using the underlying bivariate normal approach (Jöreskog, 2005) with the robust Satorra and Bentler (1994) correction, and ensuring the model’s psychometric assumptions, the external validity of the statistical conclusions presented is limited, given the non-probabilistic sampling used (Shadish et al., 2002). For example, the replication of the current study in other samples could shed light on the possible generalization of its findings. Also, it would be interesting to extend the obtained results by analyzing the invariance of the model according to the students’ area or their major subject of study, or diverse cohorts of students, e.g., traditional vs. non-traditional students, or first-generation vs. continuing-generation students. We could also conduct longitudinal studies to explore how the model would behave considering the academic organization by semesters or academic years. These studies would help to better customize the interventions to the diversity of subpopulations of HE students.

Finally, this research is a contribution to the study of the significant relationships between the determinants of career choice and academic expectations, factors that are understood as essential both for career development and student retention in HE. In addition, an integrated view of these variables is offered, considering others of a personal and contextual nature, such as gender and nationality.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Ph.D. Program in Education and Behavioral Sciences, University of Vigo. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

SA, AD, AC, and MG-S: literature review, material preparation, and results’ interpretation. AC, MG-S, and SA: data collection. AD and SA: data analysis and writing of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.