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Transitions from university study to graduate work in new industries such as information technology (IT) are not well understood. As the IT industry is a significant recruiter of graduates and an important component of the UK economy, the transition into the IT profession needs to be understood better. In addition, understanding the transition into IT work may contribute to a broader understanding of transitions in the new industries more generally. We focus on three cases selected from a broader longitudinal project and take as our starting point graduates' perspectives on their transitions. We use Bourdieu's conceptions of field, habitus and capital to move beyond existing policy discourses which tend to concentrate exclusively on the qualities of graduates. Specifically, we argue that, to understand transitions we need to focus on the work and the organisational context (field), the habitus of the individual making the transition, and the resources (capital) that individuals may deploy. That is, individual transitions are better understood by considering field, habitus and capital and the interactions between them.The transition from university study into graduate work is not yet well understood (Dahlgren et al. 2006;Johnston 2003), particularly in relation to specific professions and/or industries. The policy discourse often adopts a 'learning equals earning' Vocations and Learning (2011) 4:133-150

We present seven case-studies of undergraduate recruitment to Computer Science courses together with analysis of students' success during the early part of their study. We focus particularly upon qualification on entry, the subjects studied in the early university curriculum, and student grades.We find that while university admissions are complex processes, there exists sufficient commonality to permit some useful comparisons. These suggest that predicting undergraduate performance on the basis of entry qualifications is fraught. Nevertheless, it seems that students who arrive at university with a record of success in earlier studies may be more likely to succeed than otherwise. In particular, good grades in pre-university study may indicate that they are more likely to do well in the mathematical part of the university curriculum. Conversely, we find nothing in entry qualifications to indicate which students will be successful in the study of programming.