"When dealing with issues of the education sector, high enrolment figures in the tertiary education sector are one of the most remarkable developments in recent years. Due to demographics and this trend, it had become increasingly obvious that there will be a shortage of skilled workers with vocational training in companies and especially in SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises).High school students are currently more likely to prefer an academic degree to vocational training. This is mainly because, on the one hand, academic careers and studies are massively promoted and, on the other hand, parents and schools - as important stakeholders - value an academic degree much higher than vocational training. Moreover, careers based on an academic degree seem to be more promising on the material side in terms of salaries and prestige. The main thesis of the project ""UniVET - University or Vocational Education and Training"" was that the preference for an academic degree and the lack of alternatives for dropouts are largely due to the scarcity of knowledge about career opportunities based on vocational training that can lead to equal material wealth and social prestige. The project therefore had the task of analysing these trends in detail in all partner countries to create offers in the form of comprehensive information material for the main target groups in this area (students, dropouts, parents, schools, employers). The main objective was to increase career guidance and the attractiveness of vocational education and training. A holistic view of career decisions for different target groups across all partner countries was the innovative approach of this project. The presentation of possibilities of the individual learning systems was also considered.Preliminary studies in the run-up to the project clearly showed that the challenges of the next few years would be equally dramatic in all partner countries due to the high drop-out rates in both university and vocational training programmes. All in all, the economy could lose an enormous amount of human resources. Young people who initially take the less suitable career path for themselves drop out, start something new and are much later available on the labour market. In times of demographic change, this is a circumstance that must be counteracted. Even before the start of the project, this circumstance underlined the great importance of a targeted career choice.The project idea of UniVET consequently dealt with the question of why young people decide in favour of vocational training or a university career. The project started in September 2018 with a comparative study of the most important decision-making and influencing factors of career decisions. In order to gain further insights around the most important factors influencing young people's career orientation and to obtain different opinions, five (inter)national workshops in Germany, Italy, Spain, Lithuania and Poland were also organised. The results obtained through those activities formed the basis for the next workphase, in which a survey was conducted with high school students, drop-outs, parents, schools, employers as well as apprentices.The most important factors influencing the young people’s decisions were derived in direct connection. Following the project goals, the partners were then able to generate the most important factors for career decisions and, based on this, identify content for an analysis method of potentials among pupils and dropouts. Personal strengths and personality traits of high relevance as well as career interests were the focus. After the development and translation of all instruments used in the potential analysis, it was carried out in late 2019 in all partner countries with groups of 15 to about 30 pupils and students. The tests and the subsequent counselling sessions with the young people and their parents provided further insights into how appropriate career guidance should be conducted and what information is relevant for young people in that orientation phase. In this way, all partners learned how more orientation can be provided in the career decision phase and which information should be taken into account in the guidelines to be drawn up in the future.Consequently, at the beginning of 2020, a start was made on compiling all the findings of the project into meaningful guidelines for the target groups in all partner languages. From thereon the use of the guidelines was linked to a subsequent evaluation questionnaire from March 2020 to find out, if it´s a helpful guideline. During this phase, validation and necessary adjustments were made.In December 2020, the final versions of the ""Guidelines for career orientation"" were published and are now available at http://univet-project.eu and https://play.google.com/store/apps to sustainably improve the vocational orientation of young people, to inform all stakeholders about the career possibilities."