Factors influencing career choice: the Romanian business and administration students’ experience

Abstract

The paper aims to identify and rank the factors influencing Romanian business and administration students' career choice. The main assumptions refer to: (a) good university education is critical factors influencing career choice; (b) business and administration students' career choices are influenced by extrinsic factors; (c) students' early exposure to profession contribute to successful careers. The paper findings are based on data collected from 496 undergraduate and master programs students enrolled in business and administration university education programs at Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES) during 2014/2015 academic year. BUES undergraduate and graduate students were distributed a questionnaire with 17 questions. Crosstabulation, frequency analysis and descriptive statistics were used for processing data collected. The survey conducted had broader objectives; therefore, there will be presented only results obtained after processing some of the questions of the survey which considered relevant for the aim of this paper. The findings indicate that extrinsic and interpersonal factors are significantly influencing career choice of business and administration students. Results are relevant for the university management: successful integration of graduates is becoming part of the quality assurance for any university. Accurate knowledge about factors influencing students' career choice is needed to university staff so that to design and implement tools to support students to make the "right" career choice and to contribute to sustainable insertion of its graduates to the labor market. Thus, university staff has to identify perceptions and factors influencing students' career choice so that to design and implement tools to support students' career development.

Identification of Key Factors for Selection of Accounting Specialization by Students at Public Higher Education Institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina

“…A large number of authors have based their research on influencing factors of career choice based on this three-dimensional classification (Agarwala, 2008;Abbasi & Sarwat, 2014;Marinas, Igret, Marinaș, & Prioteasa, 2016;Jamil, 2019;Nwobi, Uzoekwe, Ojo, & Odo, 2020;and others).…”

Factores que influyen en la decisión de estudiar ingeniería comercial según la perspectiva del alumnado de los sistemas público y privado de la Región de Coquimbo, Chile

“…Es interesante denotar el trabajo de Ashari et al (2019), en el cual mostró que el conocimiento de la carrera es un predictor significativo de su elección. Esto coincide con otros estudios que muestran que el conocimiento profesional, la conciencia laboral y el aprendizaje sobre el mundo laboral, influirían en la elección de carrera (Marinas et al, 2016;Nyamwange, 2016). Así, información referida a la profesión, el entorno laboral y salarios, facilitaría elegir estudiar ingeniería comercial, reconocida por su buena empleabilidad y altos ingresos.…”

“…En la actualidad, la elección de carrera es un campo de estudio ampliamente explorado, sobre todo el análisis de las motivaciones y de sus preferencias determinantes (Ashari et al, 2019;Bergmark et al, 2018;Bukuluki et al, 2019;García-Ripa et al, 2018;Karabulut y Erkanli, 2017;Marinas et al, 2016;Ng et al, 2016;Quattrocchi et al, 2017). Históricamente, en el ámbito motivacional, se encuentran diversos marcos contextuales que abordan su concepción (por ejemplo: la teoría de la atribución de Heider, la teoría socialcognitiva de Bandura, la teoría de autorregulación de Kuhl y la teoría de metas de logro de Elliot y Dweck) destacando, como enfoque teórico del presente estudio, la Teoría de la Autodeterminación de Deci y Ryan (2000).…”

“…Villamizar y Delgado (2017) analizaron los motivos por estudiar psicología en Colombia, encontrando que los factores de mayor peso están los motivos afiliativos, seguidos por los de logro y prestigio. Marinas et al (2016) examinaron los factores que indicen en la elección por estudiar programas de administración y negocio en Factores que influyen en la decisión de estudiar ingeniería comercial…”

Improving Transition from School to Active Life: What Contribution of the European Social Funds

“…Even if there is work done in Romania on the internships, most of them address the influence of internships on students future career choices or quality related issues [11], but there is no work done to address the funding issues of students internships. Also, in Romania, there is good work done on the added value of ESF funding, but most of them are focusing on human capital in rural areas [12] or absorption [13], but work on the added value of ESF funding for increased students' participation to quality internships and their future employability has not been conducted yet, even if, at EU level, official have been highlighted the importance of the funding issues to deliver relevant work based learning and transition from school to active life schemes to enhance young people employability.…”