This paper deals with the educational aspect of the production and reproduction of highly qualified manpower through examining the processes at play when people return to school by enrolling in technical or engineering training programs. Our interest is focussed specifically on returning to school as an emblematic situation in recent educational policy frameworks. We are trying to better understand how school return is done, how professional representations act upon it and how previous school experience influences individual projects. Our analysis focuses on the social and cultural factors involved in decisions on program choices and professional orientation made by students who return to school after an interruption. We analyse the discourse of male and female students who have chosen to take advantage of the flexibility of the Quebec educational system in order to complete or improve on their initial education or to attempt a career change. More specifically, we want to know how various forms of articulation between formal training and work influence students’ social representations of university degrees, the evolution of their own school career and individual professional projects.