Challenges faced by Students Career Offices

Nowadays, most local universities and colleges have their own career guidance offices that are existed to help their students get prepared for job markets or to have an entrepreneurship career path by providing various career services starting from soft skills to writing CVs and job interviews, and more. Despite that these services are provided to students with no fees as part of colleges' responsibilities and also to meet national and international academic accreditations policies and standards, career guidance offices still face challenges to attract students to benefit from their valuable career services. According to O’Hara, the recent report presented by Strada Education and Gallup -which is also supported by McGraw-Hill Education- stated that “40% of students never take advantage of the free career services offered by their colleges” (2018). So, are the career offices at the local colleges close to this international average rate?!

It was expected that the equation would change as it was thought that students would massively start targeting career offices because they might be scared about their ambiguous future career path due to the anxious employment low rates that were and is still a result of the economic crisis that began a few years back. However, unfortunately, there has not been that much change if no at all. Therefore, the struggle to get and reach a wider number of students continues.

Actually, there are various reasons led to such a low rate of students awareness and engagement with career offices at their colleges as outlined below:

Focusing on Academic Performance & Social Life

It was noticed that students focus extensively on their studies and social life in most of their study years (DeSantis, 2019). Obviously, they almost access the career services at the end of study years and there is also a big percentage of students accessing these services after their graduation or prior to graduation. Even though there are students who understand how important career services are but they don’t think these services are a priority yet for their university life (Paterson, 2019).

Anxiety about finding jobs

There is an increase of anxiety among students about finding jobs in the future due to tough competition in the job market (Graduate Management Admission Council, 2019) and due to the current employability crisis in the country. So, students feel that there is no point to use career services and they feel they have no confidence in their skills to compete despite what career services are offered (O'Hara, 2018). Unfortunately, this sort of anxiety is even among first-year students and the worst among their families who are supposed to be their motivators.

Misperception of the role of career offices

A misperception of the roles of career offices among students and even among academic faculties is really obvious as they think these career offices are more of placement service centers and they are responsible for finding immediate jobs for students after their graduation (Graduate Management Admission Council, 2019). For this reason, some students visit career offices sometimes even after 2 – 3 years as the first-time visit because they failed to get a job and refer this failure to the career offices because they do their job according to misunderstanding.

The trusted circle of references

Some students feel that their family, friends, and senior classmates are the most trusted resources to get career guidance instead of consulting their college career counselors (Fadulu, 2019). They consult their families and friends about significant decisions that can define their career future such as choosing majors and career planning while they are supposed to get such consultation from their career offices. Such an approach might work for students who have family members with experts in the same topics and majors. 

Don’t know these offices exist

It might be a little bit strange but it is true regardless that most students used career services while they were at school. Based on a study, some students never know that career offices exist or there are career services for university students (Bibeau, 2017). This might be due to different reasons and the above-mentioned reasons are not excluded. Also, some career office location “is too far from the main campus” that makes it difficult for students to know about it and visit for counseling services (Fadulu, 2019).

Lack of college support

It is rare to find a college without a career office and that is due to the significant role it makes for students. However, these career offices are faced with internal challenges which are the lack of college administration support such as staffing, funding, and awareness (Paterson, 2019). For example, some career offices have one person operating the whole office plus some additional students affair tasks are assigned to him/her, such a situation requires a miracle to do at least 70% of their task.

The above-mentioned reasons for the low rate of students awareness and engagement with career offices at colleges are still not all the reasons but they are the most important reasons behind this situation. The career offices themselves with support of their colleges' administrations and academic faculties can overcome such challenges for the benefits of their students' future career paths. 

I hope you read my previous article: Seven Reasons to visit the career center at your early years at the university

References

Bibeau, T. (2017, April 19). Keeping Your Career Center Relevant to Students. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.symplicity.com/higher-ed/blog/career-services/keeping-your-career-center-relevant-to-students 

Cobb, M. (2018, March 16). Why Does PR Monitoring Matter? The Strategy of PR Monitoring. Retrieved March 27, 2019, from https://stantoncomm.com/strategy-pr-monitoring

DeSantis, N. How to Increase Student Engagement with your Career Center. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-increase-student-engagement-your-career-center-nicole-desantis/ 

Fadulu, L. (2019, February 27). Why Are College Students Shunning Career Services? Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/why-arent-college-students-using-career-services/551051/

Gallup, Inc. Strada-Gallup 2017 College Student Survey. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://stradaeducation.gallup.com/reports/225161/2017-strada-gallup-college-student-survey.aspx

Graduate Management Admission Council (Ed.). Tackling the Top 10 Challenges in Career Services. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.gmac.com/why-gmac/gmac-news/gmnews/2003/september-october/tackling-the-top-10-challanges-in-career-services

Higher Apprenticeship. Researching and analysing data for public relations. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.contentextra.com/publicrelations/unit12/unit12home.aspx

O'Hara, R. E. 3 Ways to Get More Students to Visit Career Services. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/nudging-ahead/201803/3-ways-get-more-students-visit-career-services

Paterson, J. (2019, January 24). 4 ways colleges can make career prep 'unavoidable' for students. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.educationdive.com/news/4-ways-colleges-can-make-career-prep-unavoidable-for-students/546698/