The Effects of Career Education on College Campus Personnel.

Overview & Synopsis

The purpose of the study was to determine to what extent the administrators, counseling staff, and full-time faculty members of the Frederick Campus of Tidewater Community College were aware of and influenced by career education in the development of new and modification of existing programs. A four page, 12-item, locally constructed questionnaire was used. The sample consisted of 13 administrators, seven counselors and 81 full-time faculty members. The results of the tabulation were evaluated to identify the three groups' understanding of career education, the extent to which they used career education in their respective areas, to what extent the Campus Career Education services were used, and needs for future institutional planning in this area. A majority of those surveyed indicated that career education was important to their academic discipline, that it was part of their personal educational philosophy, and that it was positively affecting their program content through greater student interest. The majority also agreed that the best definition of career education was providing students with skills for selecting, preparing for and finding employment. However, their explanations of the method used to incorporate career education in the classroom indicated that they were providing occupational information and not teaching career development skills. This suggested a contradiction between the acknowledged, and defined goal of career education, and the type of information provided in the classroom. This contradiction resulted in the recommendation that a second phase of defining the skills and implementation methods be initiated. (Author/LBH)