The worldwide rapid social and economic changes also give challenges to health and social policies. Nowadays there is a need for integration of health and social services and self-managed work teams, which can improve the quality of services offered to clients. This is especially a challenge to nursing and social work education. One approach to respond to this challenge is to develop students' self-direction during training. Today self-direction is one of the central principles in adult learning, as one of its aims is to prepare students to manage changes in society. In this study, nursing (n = 68) and social work (n = 71) students' orientation towards their studies was investigated at the beginning of their professional education. The data were collected by a questionnaire developed for the study. The results suggest that, in general, both nursing and social work students are orientated actively towards their studies. However, nursing students were less willing to participate in planning their studies than were social work students. Moreover, nursing students were more teacher-directed than social work students.