Exploring forms of communication for disseminating career guidance services to potential university students

Abstract

Making career choices is crucial to students in all endeavours. However, such decision seems to be difficult and problematic for many students. The reason for such difficulty can be attributed to the way and manner career choices are communicated to students, consequently, this has affected the enthusiasm, learning abilities and academic performances of students. Hence, this study explored various forms of communication for disseminating career guidance services to potential university students. Quantitative method was adopted for the study. Purposive and random sampling was employed in selecting two South African universities and the respondents of the study respectively. The study sample was 374 first year students. A self-designed questionnaire was administered to the selected respondents. The collected data were analysed using Moonstat. The findings of the study following the analysed data show that friends, internet, career seminars, career workshops, university open day, television are various ways by which career information is being communicated to students in the two selected South African universities. However, radio, newspaper and SMS are other media that can be explored. The study recommends amongst others that universities should advertise their courses through various forms of communication to the potential, prospective university students so as to reduce doubts and transfer from one course to another in their first year of study. This is envisaged to help students overcome their challenges in making career choices, consequently, enhance their learning abilities and academic performances.