The purpose of this study was to examine the motives for Swedish student teachers to study to become teachers and to explore the relationship between teachers’ motives and their academic engagement and dropout rates at the end of their studies. The findings reveal that the students enrolled in teacher education due to mainly altruistic motives, such as a desire to help and support students and contribute to society, and intrinsic motives, such as perceiving teaching to be stimulating and being interested in the particular school subjects. Extrinsic motives such as reliable income and secure job conditions were not as important to them. In addition, the findings showed a negative significant relationship between the altruistic motive and dropout, mediated by academic engagement, whereas the relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic motives and academic engagement were not significant.