Major changes took place in the field of education during the Covid-19 pandemic, and did not bypass higher education institutions in the Republic of Croatia. Distance learning has become a key way of teaching, while students have experienced a different way of acquiring necessary competencies. Previous research has shown that students believe that the faculty allows them to acquire necessary competencies and knowledge to work in the field of education and are generally satisfied with the implementation of distance learning. The research problem is related to the sudden transition to distance learning, which took place at all levels of the education system due to the COVID 19 pandemic. The transition to distance learning has significantly affected the realization of competence in higher education, and the important issue for this paper is student teachers' self-assessment of readiness for work. The aim of this research was to examine students' attitudes toward the experience of studying in online conditions, their selfperceived burnout, satisfaction with studying and readiness to teach, with regard to gender, year of study and field of study. 111 students from different Croatian universities participated in the research. The results indicated a statistically significant difference in students' attitudes towards the exhaustion factor with respect to the year of study. In other scales, no major differences were found in the attitudes of students with regard to gender, year of study and field of study.