Personal values, social capital, and higher education student career decidedness: a new ‘protean’-informed model

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.