Factors Influencing on Career Choice of Management and Commerce Undergraduates in National Universities in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Selecting one’s career wisely and rightly is a core factor for performance, individual satisfaction and societal wellbeing. Identifying what determines career choice among undergraduates can have many a benefit. This study, therefore, aims at exploring the influence of various factors on career choice decision among management and commerce undergraduates in national universities in Sri Lanka. The existing literature in this regard, within the study context, is skeletal, and that this study, having explained about the socio-demographical composition of management and commerce undergraduates, achieved three research objectives; to assess the level of career choice among Sri Lankan national university management and commerce undergraduates; to identify the priorities of factors affecting career choices; and thirdly, to assess the influence of such career choice factors on level of career choices among Management and Commerce undergraduates in the national universities in Sri Lanka. This study designed as a postpositivist study, taking all national universities that have commerce and management streams as the population while using systematic random sampling. Data were collected using self reported questionnaire from 371 final year management and commerce, undergraduates in six Sri Lankan national universities. Correlation and regression analysis were used in analyzing data. Survey results revealed that personal factors and Job-related factors are the most influential factors on determining graduates’ career choice.

Researchers concluded that, personal factors highly influence on career choices that implicate graduates be choosier in deciding their careers rather accepting available and demanded careers in the country. Further, it was concluded that majority of the graduates, concerned have moderately level career awareness. That implicates that graduates may not find their rightly matching career at their earliest, instead, they may realize it, after starting work. The identified implications guided the authors to recommend strong career development activities by the universities through their curricula and out of curricula activities to create career awareness of the most demanding and prioritized careers while motivating the graduates to accept such available careers.