Veterans who leave military service often struggle with PTSD and alienation when they transition into education, which impacts participation with teachers and peers, and results in dropout. International studies highlight that 88% of student veterans drop out during the first year of college, and 46% think about suicide, a situation that research relates to a conflict between habituated military practices and civilian norms. Here, numbers are seen to increase significantly for veterans with short military service time. Danish veterans serve the shortest of all NATO countries with 20 months on average, which makes them a particularly interesting target for research on transformative learning in relation to habituated military practices. While the transformation of military practices is a key issue in veteran research, current approaches focus on the acculturation of veterans to civilian norms, which disregards veteran agency. This project employs transformative learning theory to illustrate the processes and outcomes of veterans’ transition to education. The analytical focus of the project is on the transformation of veteran orientations, defined as implicit meaning structures that guide habituated practice and shape how veterans experience and participate in education.