An Assessment on Career Development Counseling Service Delivery, Challenges and Existing Needs of Auricular Undergraduate Students
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2019-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the career development counseling services delivery, associated challenges, and existing needs of students among AAU regular undergraduate students‟. To this end, the study employed a qualitative approach within which variety of data gathering tools such as key informant interview (KII), focus group discussions (FGD), document analysis and observation were employed. The method was found convenient to make the required modifications in the course of the study unlike the quantitative approach as the knowledge of the subject among the research participants were known explicitly beforehand. Accordingly, FGD was used to collect data from the students whereas the KII was used to collect data from the guidance and counseling (GCU) experts and that of student career development center (SCDC) staff. Both the KII and the FGD were conducted in Amharic by using hand written notes and partly audio records. All data from the field work were organized, transcribed and translated into English first. In organizing the gathered data, codes were given to each participant‟s response and it was these codes used while this research report is written. In sum, a total of 28 people were involved in the study of whom 10 were from the AAU staff (from those two ventures i.e. GCU and SCDC) while the remaining 18 were students who are representatives in their respective departments and sections. Moreover, document analyses were made upon the number of bi-weekly, interim and annual report found in the SCDC structure whereas the observation has been used to collect data concerning the office space and setup of the GCUs‟ and SCDC. As a result, the study found out that the majority of students don‟t ever know that the services offered by GCU do exist despite the fact that they have stayed for the last two to four years at AAU. On the other hand, SCDC is a new venture at AAU, which is only one year old, and have been working on graduating class students in which case, the majority of the FGD participants‟ were not as such expected to knew about it and the services that it offer, in relative terms. Be that as it may, the regardless of its newness the SCDC was found to delivered better career development counseling services than that of age old GCU. On the other hand, both GCU and SCDC were found to have challenges specifically related to office space and other required inputs. Lack of the required human resource input has also been found the additional challenge for SCDEC whereas GCU lack clear guidelines, policies, protocols and the required counseling skills to function fully. So far as the students career development counseling needs are concerned, the SCDC found to have a better competitive advantage than that of the GCU in the sense that all the activities embedded in SCDC are directly related to the career development needs of the students while much of the GCU experts time has been allocated to small group of students with difficulties in their personal/social life. In reality, it is a misunderstanding and lack of guidance that make the GCU experts to focus on that component; otherwise, being in a school set up much of their time and energy has been expected to be bestowed to support the students‟ academic and career matters. And a huge gap has been observed on the part of the students as to what career development counseling needs that they have and prioritize them. Finally, the study attempted to recommend the need for developing career development counseling resources that could be made accessible to the majority of students in a technology assisted manner and the pressing need for collaboration between SCDC and GCU of AAU
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Education