Abstract
This study investigates the role of personal values as motivational antecedents for understanding higher education (HE) student career decidedness among university business school (UBS) students. We propose a new ‘protean’-informed HE student career decidedness model for theorizing how both personal values and social capital mediators (student social capital; personal, social and enterprise skills; access to resources) help in the student-centric and self-directed processes of career decision-making. A mixed-methods study combines a (stage 1) survey of 308 UBS students from 5 (UK) UBS, with results from (stage 2) 4 student focus groups, and (stage 3) 2 staff–student interactive seminars. From an employability perspective, arguably, the ultimate responsibility for becoming a ‘protean graduate’ rests with each UBS student, while the obligation of HE staff is to effectively facilitate and nurture all possible personal growth and skills development opportunities.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 269-291 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Studies in Higher Education |
Volume | 43 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 13 Apr 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- career decidedness
- employability
- enterprise skills
- personal values
- social capital
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education