Career Consciousness Among The Urban/ Semi-Urban And Rural Students Of West Bengal: A Sociological Study

Abstract

Career includes all roles that one undertakes throughout his/her life - education, training, paid and unpaid work, family, volunteer work, leisure activities and more. Today, the term career is viewed as a continuous process of learning and development. Though the presented Indian studies provide an insight into the career-related experiences of rural youth, yet further research on such issue is warranted. Against this backdrop, the objectives of this study are to explore the career aspirations of the urban/ semi-urban and rural students of West Bengal, especially in areas like Diamond Harbour, Beliaghata and College Street, Kolkata. It also finds out whether these adolescent college students receive support and guidance from their parents for their career aspirations. It attempts to explore whether the adolescent boys and girls have faced any challenge/ challenges while pursuing their career prospects and the ways by which they are able to overcome those challenges. The findings reveal that majority of students are rural and semi-urban who understand career consciousness as earning medium income and whose career goals include pursuing higher studies (Masters and Ph.D) and few of them also dream of becoming an engineers and doctors. Choosing such career prospect would help them to establish a good career goal. However, they also cited few challenges while pursuing their career, like, financial crisis as most students are socio-economically disadvantaged followed by their subjects being tough since most of the books of the subjects they studied were written in English which made it difficult for them to read and understand as they are from rural background. These college going adolescents also responded that their career goal of becoming an academician, engineer or doctor mismatched with their parents’, as their parents have a different career goals which would make them more job oriented like starting business, joining the profession of law or becoming an entrepreneur. Such mismatch has been related to career aspirations and career choice theory by Guay and York where the influence of family and peers shape the career decisions of youngsters.