Universities have responded to the pressing issue of graduate employability by introducing career services. Despite the wealth of resources at their fingertips, a concerning trend persists: student engagement with career services is low. Why is that? Let’s uncover this together.
Career Services and Its Importance
Career services include multiple forms of support, from interview training to access to employment opportunities. They make significant differences in educational, social and employment outcomes. In contrast, unengaged students are unlikely to possess the desired employability skills, resulting in unemployment, lower public evaluations of universities, and reduced economic growth. To improve student engagement, we must understand the factors deterring students from engaging with career services.
Our Rationale
Studies have identified institutional barriers to student engagement, such as a lack of tailored career support and insufficient advertising of the services. But here’s the thing: most research on career services overlooks the role of culture, even though international students face unique challenges. For example, students from collectivistic cultures often feel the pressure to select career paths that conform to family expectations, which can leave students feeling anxious and frustrated, adding to the stress of navigating life in a foreign country.
Given this, we sought to compare home and international students in their opinions and perceived barriers to engaging with career services. We focused on psychology students at University College London (UCL), as their attendance in career services is lower than in other departments (Coyte, 2023).
A Mixed-Methods Approach
An online questionnaire was administered to gather quantitative data on students’ awareness, usage, and perceived helpfulness of the services, and levels of barriers encountered. We also wanted to dig deeper beyond numbers. So, a focus group was held to promote open discussions and gain insights into students’ lived experiences of career services and barriers to their engagement. Then, we conducted an inductive thematic analysis – a method for identifying meaningful patterns within the dataset without predefined hypotheses.
What did we find?
Questionnaire
- All 47 respondents were aware of at least one of the career services at UCL, but only about half of the participants had used them. Among the engagers, 64% reported seeking the services for specific career advice, despite UCL Careers currently lacking the resources to offer this.
- Participants faced more barriers related to time and motivation than institutional ones, suggesting that students may generally not be engaging in career development due to personal challenges rather than problems with the services, per se.
- No significant differences were found between international and home students in their awareness, usage, perceived helpfulness of the services, or levels of perceived barriers. However, the focus group data revealed subtle cultural differences…
Focus Group
We identified three main themes, each with two sub-themes, as illustrated below. Let’s go through each theme.
Figure: Thematic Map
Disconnected from Students’ Lives
Career services need to fit into students’ lives. Participants struggled to build their schedule around the timing of the services, often having to prioritise academic work or address challenges of adapting to the university environment (in their first year) instead.
“I feel like I haven’t been to many events as I wanted to simply because of the times” (P1)
At the same time, students wanted the services to be introduced earlier. According to participants, first-year students often think that it’s “too early” (P2) to start contemplating their career paths, leaving many feeling undecided and stressed as they transition into the next year.
Huge Endeavour of Career Development
Given the range of career options, some participants reported feeling uncertain about their career prospects and decision-making process.
“I’m not very sure where I’m supposed to start” (P1)
This uncertainty was exacerbated by career services providing “overwhelming” (P3) and “irrelevant” (P3) information, as perceived by participants. When attempting to access relevant information, they described navigating through online resources as complicated.
External Pressures to Career Plans
Peers often seemed to dictate participants’ career goals, as students aimed to achieve similar levels of experience and understanding of their career aspirations as their peers.
“I feel like because other people are doing it, […] I should be doing some things as well.” (P1)
Parents and cultures also had “a big influence” (P3) on international students’ career plans, but increased opportunities for career exploration served as a route to independence from cultural expectations of pursuing certain career paths.
Take-Home Message
Career services need to…
- …personalise their advice to suit each student’s unique circumstances and experience.
- …arrange the timing of their services around students’ schedules and career development stages. Collaborating with mental health services may help students to effectively cope with stressors, resulting in more time and space to access career support.
- …guide students on taking the first step in their career path by providing concise, structured, and relevant resources.
- …offer learning opportunities to expand their career options and personal interests, thereby overcoming cultural norms.
Together, the findings highlight the importance of career services in tailoring to different student profiles, who are at various stages of career development and express unique personal and cultural needs.
However, our study comes with limitations:
- Our sample size was small, with only three students in the focus group. A more representative sample capturing the voices of all academic year groups and genders would improve the study quality.
- Our findings may not be transferable to contexts outside of psychology students at UCL. Future research is needed on career services for other academic disciplines and in other universities and countries.
- We categorised students into home or international students, but there may be important differences within these diverse groups. Uncovering cultural nuances in students’ engagement with career services across nationalities can bring us closer to creating a supportive environment accessible to all students seeking career support!
References
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Corey, P., & Chen, C. P. (2019). Young women’s experiences of parental pressure in the context of their career exploration. Australian Journal of Career Development, 28(2), 151–163. https://doi.org/10.1177/1038416219830102
Coyte, K. (2023) [Data for attendance in career appointments by department]. [Unpublished raw data]. University College London.
Donald, W. E., Ashleigh, M. J., & Baruch, Y. (2018). Students’ perceptions of education and employability: Facilitating career transition from higher education into the labor market. Career Development International, 23(5), 513–540. https://doi.org/10.1108/cdi-09-2017-0171
Fajaryati, N., Budiyono, Akhyar, M., & Wiranto. (2020). The Employability Skills Needed To Face the Demands of Work in the Future: Systematic Literature Reviews. Open Engineering, 10(1), 595–603. degruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/eng-2020-0072
Fouad, N. A., Guillen, A., Harris-Hodge, E., Henry, C., Novakovic, A., Terry, S., & Kantamneni, N. (2006). Need, Awareness, and Use of Career Services for College Students. Journal of Career Assessment, 14(4), 407–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072706288928
Luo, J. (2013). Career Services as a Bridge to International Student Acculturation and Success. The Vermont Connection, 34(1). https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc/vol34/iss1/8
Mori, S. C. (2020). Addressing the Mental Health Concerns of International Students. Journal of Counseling & Development, 78(2), 137–144. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2000.tb02571.x
Credits
Cover picture by Freepik.