More than 35% of the students in Dutch senior vocational education leave their course unqualified. Furthermore, the number of school-leavers transferring to higher vocational education is very high (around 25%). Due to the costs that are associated with these high dropout and transfer rates, senior vocational education is very topical. Often, high dropout and transfer rates are explained from different angles, but one could question if a more integrated approach could improve our understanding of school career decisions. Therefore, we investigated whether career decisions during a course can be explained within the same theoretical framework as career decisions at the end of a course.