Christian HärtwigBerufliche Ziele von Bachelor-Studierenden

About this book deutschenglish

Due to new academic structures and progressive structural changes of work and labour, special challenges for bachelor students to find a convenient career entry arise. For students of humanities and social sciences it is especially important yet difficult to develop clear occupational goals since distinct practical and professional relevance is lacking from their academic education. In addition, work in this area requires a high level of vocational goal orientation, self-organisation, flexibility, and further autonomous development of own employability. The program “KOMPASS for vocational goal setting and self-organisation” at the FU Berlin supports students in their development of vocational goals and a reflexive approach to themselves and their environment.

This work examines to what extent KOMPASS supports students in clarifying and specifying vocational goals and which forms of goal changing occur during the program. A longitudinal study via questionnaires was conducted over three academic years, comparing the KOMPASS participants with an online control group without KOMPASS and an online control group with professional experience. Additionally, qualitative interviews with KOMPASS participants of the first cohort were conducted at the beginning and the end of the program.

The effectiveness of the program is shown by medium and high effect sizes in the dimensions clarity of goals, goal changes, career strain, and exploration behaviour. Change effects of the program were higher than those of the control groups. Within KOMPASS nine empirical types of reflexive goal changing were identified. The triangulation of the results showed corresponding quantitative differences between the qualitative types. Besides methodical and theoretical implications, optimization proposals for KOMPASS and approaches to improve career preparation in bachelor study programs were discussed.