Veronika Khurumova
Joana Carneiro Pinto*- Catolica Research Center for Psychological, Family and Social Well-Being, Faculty of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal
Higher education career centers should tailor their services toward empowering students to make them employable after graduation to meet the demands of the 21st century world of work. This paper aims to reflect on career counseling services provided by Higher Education Institutions. We start by presenting a brief history of their development around the world, with particular emphasis on Portugal. Next, a study about the current situation of these services in the country is presented, starting with an analysis of their organization, the type of actions/activities/services provided, as well as their accessibility. Results indicate that the Career Services in some Portuguese Higher Education Institutions appear not to be fully developed, and where they exist, they often focus mostly (and sometimes solely) upon job placement or internship provision. More investment is needed to meet the new employability needs and demands of both students (and their families) and the labor market.
Introduction
“All higher education institutions, together with governments/government agencies and employers, should improve the provision, accessibility and quality of their careers and employment-related services to students and alumni.”1 The importance of graduate employability is not only recognized in literature (Jackson and Wilton, 2016; Helens-Hart, 2019; Yorke, 2006) but claimed by students themselves as one of the reasons to enroll (Eagan et al., 2016), and also by employers, who consider recent college graduates to be under-prepared to enter the workforce (Craig, 2019; Hart Research Associates, 2015). The current challenges of career services are more critical than ever before due to the need to promote the employability of students (Dey and Real, 2010 as cited in Terzaroli and Oyekunle, 2019). Employability, thus, exceled “the ability to secure a job and progress in it” instead, “it is about developing critical and reflective abilities that empower and enhance the students’ self-reliance” (Terzaroli and Oyekunle, 2019, p. 91). Higher education career centers should tailor their services toward empowering students to make them employable after graduation to meet the demands of the 21st century world of work.
This paper begins by presenting a brief history of the development of career services around the world and then focuses on the development of these services in Portugal. A study about the current situation of these services in the country is also presented, starting with the analysis of their organization, the type of actions/activities/services provided (including online services), as well as their accessibility.
Career services: a brief history
Career Services, also named Career Services Offices (CSOs), Career Centers, or Career Resource Centers (Herr et al., 2004) have a long record in history with services’ development greatly reflecting the evolution of the field in general as “services evolved from an orientation toward Job Placement to a full range of career planning services being offered to meet the needs of diverse student populations” (Niles and Harris-Bowlsbey, 2005, p. 397).
Terzaroli (2019) notes that before the Career Service establishment, there existed the Appointment Boards and Placement Offices in the UK and the US universities, respectively. Their scope of work, however, resembled more of a mentoring or recommendation and was aimed solely at high-achieving students. According to Kretovicks et al. (1999, p.78), “In this model, the highly qualified student need only enroll in college and faculty mentors planed the student’s future employment.” In the UK the first Career Services appeared at the Oxford University in 1892 but only in 1950s and 1960s the services became incorporated in all institutions. In terms of the type of activities provided those years, Watts (2002) as cited in Terzaroli (2019) points out three major areas, such as advisory interviews, provision of job information and placement activities, with a primary focus on job interview as a counselling tool.
In the US, although one of the first career centers, Self-Help Bureau2 was established at Princeton university in 1912, it was not until 1940s–1960s that career offices emerged on national college campuses. In the 1970s and 1980s when graduate unemployment rose and career counselors began stressing the importance of skill development and vocational training in the light of higher competition, the services became popular among students. Ever since then, service provision has developed to meet labor market demands, student vocational concerns as well as technological advances (Dey and Real, 2010 as cited in Terzaroli and Oyekunle, 2019). By 2000s career offices were transformed into “dynamic networking hubs that engaged hiring organizations in campus recruiting and facilitated networking between students and recruiters” (Dey and Cruzvergara, 2014, p. 5). Although services provided and modes of delivery differ across institutions, typically career service offices supported students throughout their stay at university in the form of career counselling, job fairs and CV assistance, but nowadays there is also a strong emphasis on building connections with employers, experiential learning, and mentoring (Dey and Cruzvergara, 2014).
Currently in Europe there is no single organizational or legal framework for Career Services, and “curricular traditions and guidance approaches differ too greatly among member states” (Thomsen, 2014, p. 6). Services are offered either at a university’s central level, or by particular faculties and departments, they can be internal (to the university) or carried out by external institutions. The same differentiation applies to both scope and delivery methods, as well as staffing and funding of the career guidance departments (Paviotti, 2015). And, in the worldwide perspective, Career Offices have been traditionally much more strongly developed in some countries—e.g., the United Kingdom and the United States (OECD, 2004).
The evidence from the leading US universities (MIT, Stanford University, Princeton University) suggests that these institutions pay great attention to career development issues. The range of provided services are mostly common among Career Services offered worldwide in general: individual and group counselling, providing internships and holding career events on campus. However, the depth of work appears to be implied by the number of employees of the Career Centers. For example, in MIT3 apart from over 20 full-time employees, several former trained students are also involved in the career guidance provision through “peer career advisor”4 programs. Stanford University provides the services through a separately created department (and a corresponding website) called BEAM5 and the number of involved personnel is also impressive.6 Princeton university engages its students in career development already in the first year of undergraduate studies with a pre-developed plan of activities7 with the inclusion of peer career advisors, partnered employers and alumni.
As the world and labor market keep changing, career services face the need for constant development and adaptation in order to respond (Kumar and Arulmani, 2014) with research and analysis being essential to understand what paths Career Offices must follow. Career services help students to find a job 43% of the time. Even in the U.S., nearly four in 10 students report having never visited their career services’ office8 (Vitae survey data, n.d.). According to Gallup-Purdue Index survey (Gallup, 2016), current students tend to visit career offices more often than the previous generations, with a half of U.S. college graduates reporting at least one visit over their undergraduate years. However, the report also states that only 16% of service recipients rated the experience as being “very helpful.” Moreover, respondents of the survey who indicated that their experience of using career services was of high quality felt that they were well-prepared for life after graduation, their education was financially worthwhile, and their current employment was fulfilling. These findings raise a serious question: if students show that they need career guidance, and those with positive experience report further benefits, what and how should career services change to improve the services they offer?
Career services at Portuguese universities
In Portugal specifically, first vocational guidance initiatives also appeared in the beginning of the XX century with the establishment of the Institute of Professional Guidance (IOP – Instituto de Orientação Profissional) in Lisbon in 1925. It was the first local institution involved in career guidance services and placement (Cordeiro et al., 2016) but under the political regime of Salazar (1932–1974), the IOP that had been integrated into the General Direction of Higher Education, experienced limitations of its activities. In 1960, however, the Portuguese Society of Psychology was created and in 1965 the National Employment Service was also established. The Service promoted employment, provided vocational training, and implemented career guidance activities (Cordeiro et al., 2016). In 1979, the Employment and Vocational Training Institute (IEFP – Instituto de Emprego e Formação Profissional) was created and in the 80s, centers of educational and occupational guidance appeared at the Faculties of Psychology and Educational Sciences in Universities of Porto, Coimbra and Lisbon. In 2004 a group of university career counselors together with academics established the Counselling Psychology in Higher Education Network (RESAPES - Rede de Serviços de Apoio Psicológico no Ensino Superior - Associação Profissional). The organization that currently has 40 participating universities, helps professionals communicate and share their experiences, as well as promote one other’s professional development (Taveira, 2017).
Currently, Career Services in most universities, whether being a unit inside school departments or affiliated to the Rectorate, are an intrinsic element of the HEI in Portugal. They usually have one or two full-time employees, as well as a number of part-time ones (Taveira, 2017). These professionals aim to accomplish three main objectives: (i) assist the transition from high school to university, through orientation sessions, clarifying academic pathways, and facilitating university integration, with an initial focus on employability and career planning; (ii) provide support in dealing with personal, educational, or career-related issues, helping students overcome integrated difficulties. This includes counseling sessions, workshops on time and stress management, and connections to specialized services, promoting the balance needed to achieve professional goals; and (iii) support the transition from university to the labor market, focusing on developing skills and strategies for professional integration, such as creating résumés, conducting mock interviews, supporting internship or job searches, and organizing career fairs, fostering connections with employers.
It should be noted that although much has been written about the importance of Career Services at universities (Cheung, 2012; Dey and Cruzvergara, 2014; Niles and Harris-Bowlsbey, 2005; Usher and Kwong, 2014) little comparative analysis has been done on the provision of Career Services among different higher education institutions, in Portugal specifically. Most national research has been made in the light of the historical data and the development of the sphere of Vocational Psychology (Cordeiro et al., 2016; Taveira, 2017) rather than the analysis of current provision of the services in the country’s Higher Education Institutions. However, there is a recent work by Pereira et al. (2020) done to investigate the practice of career counseling at a university in northern Portugal.
This study aims to characterize the provision of career services in Portuguese higher education institutions.
Methods
In this section we aim to present the analysis of the Career Services at the Portuguese universities. Currently, according to the Portuguese Directorate General for Higher Education (DGES – Direção Geral do Ensino Superior),9 there are 106 Higher Education Institutions in Portugal, with 70 private and 34 public. From those, 67 are Polytechnics, while 39 are Universities with a total number of almost 390.000 enrolled students as of 2020,10 an over 11% increase compared to the 2015/2016 academic year. Moreover, according to data from DGES,11 there is also significant growth in the number of foreign students enrolled in national higher education (58,350 students), representing an increase of 15% compared to the same period last year (50,721 of foreign students). Over 5,000 students were enrolled for the first time under the foreign student status in the academic year 2019/2020, which represents an increase of 34% in relation to the previous academic year. Given this trend, it can be hypothesized that graduating students, both local and foreign who decide to stay in Portugal, might face more and more severe employment difficulties, that leading to an increased need for career services.
For the purpose of this study, 92 out of 106 Portuguese HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) were analyzed, according to the following categories: (a) the organization of the Career Service, (b) academic and employment actions/activities/services provided (c) provision of online services, and (d) provision of information in English. The mentioned categories were adapted from the analysis of the works of different authors in Portugal and several other countries (Pereira and Arza Arza, 2020; Moitus and Vuorinen, 2003; Terzaroli and Oyekunle, 2019). Moreover, the researchers’ analysis of information accessibility and usability on the institutions websites is also included. Several institutions such as Higher Schools of Nursing, Nautical and Music, as well as Military and Police institutions were excluded from the analysis due to the peculiar nature of the fields, and one institution (i.e., Escola Superior Artística de Guimarães) appeared not to have a functioning website. However, due to the fact that a number of universities, such as NOVA University, Catholic University, Universities of Porto and Lisbon have Career Services on different campuses (and Schools) that appear as separate and autonomous bodies with different sets of services, the total number of analyzed entities was 100. Data on career guidance provision was extracted from HEIs’ websites or corresponding social media web pages.12
Results
Provision of career services
In the present situation, around 73% of Portuguese HEIs have Career Services. Differences in terms of bodies that provide career guidance is observed. At the present time, career guidance in Portuguese universities is delivered through different bodies such as Career Offices, GIP (Gabinetes de Inserção Profissional), GAIVA (Gabinetes de Apoio à Inserção na Vida Ativa), GESP (Gabinetes de Estágio e Saídas Profissionais), SIVA (Serviço de Inserção na Vida Ativa), Job Placement, Internship and Entrepreneurship Offices. Some work solely on the provision of career guidance or employment, others are dually responsible for psychological as well as vocational counselling. In Polytechnic of Coimbra, for example, vocational guidance is offered by Gabinete de Psicologia e de Apoio Psicopedagógico, while the institution also has a job portal available.
Types of services provided
In terms of the services currently provided at universities, only 28 of 100 HEIs investigated in Portugal have individual career counselling offered to their students. Other common methods of delivering career guidance content to students include skills workshops, events (such as career fairs) and internships. The provision of the latter is ensured by 43, and five HEIs state the provision of traineeships. Only 7% of universities provide mentoring along other services, and only two of the analyzed entities claim to have peer or alumni rather than expert mentoring. Finally, in addition to other services, entrepreneurship guidance is offered by 15 institutions.
In terms of the provision of online services (excluding job portals), only 13 institutions fall into this category. In fact, out of 100 examined HEIs, seven have information (e.g., tips) on career development on their job portals, two institutions offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), two offer either online workshops or individual guidance, while one - University of Acores - runs webinars and one - Polytechnic of Coimbra - has a developed e-learning entrepreneurship platform.
In most cases, employment support, through an internal employment/job portal, dominates over other career interventions. In fact, job portals appear to be one of the most common ways for HEIs to ensure employment of their graduates, with 45 institutions providing such service and some (e.g., ISLA Santarem), solely it. Out of universities that do not have an internally established portal, some provide vacancies straight on their websites (e.g., ISCE, ISEC Lisboa, ISTEC, Politécnico de Leiria).
Availability and usability
In terms of the apparent availability and accessibility of information on the websites, regarding the services offered, their frequency, mode of provision, as well as time relevance, up-to-date contact details of responsible personnel, most pages are still at a fairly basic level. For example, only Politécnico do Porto provides information on the full fees of additionally provided services,13 and although in most cases career services are free in Portugal, information on possible (or lack of) fees might be beneficial to future students choosing an institution or service.
Even though the information about the provided services is placed on the websites, the text design appears in a descriptive and introductory format, written in a formal style and often describing the mission and capabilities of the centers, rather than disclosing concrete information about the offered services. It seems that certain institutions do not necessarily ensure the provision of all services listed on the web to their students. Moreover, most websites fail to indicate the existence of career services in the institution on the very first landing or home page and thus an elaborate search through the website is often required.
Some analyzed Career Offices have social media pages, for example a LinkedIn page of IPVC Career Office14 or a Facebook page of Career Office of Faculty of Law of University of Lisbon.15
Career services language
Since there is a constant increase of foreign students in Portuguese Higher Education, the HEIs were analyzed in terms of the availability of the information on the career services in the English language. Thus, 40 out of 100 institutions provide information in English, whether career guidance is offered in other languages apart from Portuguese is not possible to understand from the websites.
Discussion and conclusion
This study aimed to characterize the provision of career services in Portuguese higher education institutions. For this purpose, the websites of all institutions were analyzed and, for those that indicated having a career office, a more detailed analysis was carried out regarding the entities that provide these services, the type of services offered, and their accessibility and usability, including the availability of information in English language.
Career services are provided by different bodies at each HEIs (e.g., GISP, GAIVA, Job Placement, Internship and Entrepreneurship Offices), and as such, different keywords searched include “career office; career services; employment; entrepreneurship; internship; jobs.” This means that finding appropriate information for a potential service user becomes a challenging task. This observation also relates to one of the possible limitations of this research – insufficient and hard-to-find information on HEIs websites might distort the accuracy of this analysis but for the service recipients such state of affairs is ineffective both in terms of decision to enroll in a specific institution and of applying for the claimed services.
In general, in spite of difference in delivery methods and organizational settings, there were identified five common programs/services shared by institutions: (i) Individual guidance: available in some institutions, and delivered mostly in situ (face-to-face meetings), in career offices. However, a few mention the possibility of Skype sessions (e.g., at IPLeiria); (ii) Group guidance (e.g., group seminars) is widespread among Portuguese HEIs; (iii) Internship and traineeship: these are the most common to all HEIs examined; (iv) Extra-curricular events dedicated to career development; and, (v) Entrepreneurship activities. Although it is suggested by OECD (2010) that “individual career guidance should be a part of a comprehensive career guidance framework” (p. 85), and this is the preferred modality for higher education students to address most of their career needs, especially those related to self-exploration (Pinto, 2019; Khurumova, 2021), most HEIs are not providing it to their students. Results also indicate that a small percentage only advertise internship and job offers. Such state of affairs presents a limitation to this study, as it raises a question: can the sole provision of open job vacancies through a website or a portal be considered as an operating Career Services? It is noted (Whiston and Rose, 2013, p. 250) that “there are often questions about what type of services constitute career assistance or career guidance.” Since the ultimate aim of Career Services is employability that can be described as a set of skills acquired during educational experience that helps students adapt and excel in the workplace (Yorke, 2006) and not merely securing a fist job, the present analysis excluded a mere job listing from being considered as Career Services unless provided by an appointed Career Office.
It is important to note that some institutions might be advertising at their websites more career services than they are actually providing. Even if they do, the website—as the primarily and under some circumstances the only communication method between Career Office and students, does not provide clarity and ease when navigating for information search, the latter being one of the key attributes of a quality website (Fuller and Hinegardner, 2001). Moreover, most websites fail to indicate the existence of career services in the institution on the very first landing or home page and thus an elaborate search through the website is often required. Also, some of these HEIs have a presence on social media network, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. It has been suggested that social media presence can increase a student’s sense of connection to their school and those who are more connected are more likely to complete their degree at their current university (Wilson and Gore, 2013). Moreover, recently there has been a dramatic increase in social media usage for career-related activities (Kettunen et al., 2013) and it presents a useful tool for professionals.
Currently it has been noted that modern students tend to be very demanding in terms of the expectations they have toward universities (Karani et al., 2021) and up-to-date technologies, such as the website should be used to communicate effectively and reach out to their diverse users. Undoubtedly, much has changed since in 1999 Jakob Nielsen, one of the leading experts in Web usability, determined after many usability tests that most people did not come to the Web for an “experience,” rather, it is the information, they came for Nielsen (1999). Nevertheless, 22 years later content provided on a university website still (alongside with organization and readability) maximizes user satisfaction (Karani et al., 2021). In that light, finding the necessary information might present a problem to students. That is a rather worrying observation, since recent surveys (e.g., CAEL, 2018)16 claim that students may no longer recognize the importance of career services or even not know that they are provided, which is a counterintuitive observation at a time when dramatic changes are happening in the labor market and the demand for career guidance among students should be high. Since literature shows (Fouad et al., 2006; Galliott, 2017) that students’ awareness of existence of career offices and provided services is related to the likelihood of their usage, more efforts are needed to advertise to students.
In sum, the study on career services in Portuguese HEIs identified significant limitations, such as the lack of clear and accessible information on institutional websites, which hinders both analysis and student access. Many institutions focus solely on offering internships and job listings, neglecting individual guidance and skills development. Additionally, insufficient promotion, both on websites and social media, reduces the visibility of these services. The absence of complementary data, such as interviews, further limits the depth of the analysis, highlighting the need for greater clarity and effectiveness in the communication and provision of career services.
In conclusion, in accordance with the obtained information through the web pages, Career Services in some Portuguese HEIs appear not to be fully developed, and where they exist, they often focus mostly (and sometimes solely) upon job placement or internship provision. In the complex situation of high level of youth unemployment, using solely employment guidance strategies, or dealing solely with career planning is not enough - both elements are necessary to deal with career development aspects. “Career centers are no longer the sole custodians of job and internship opportunities” (Schaub, 2012, p. 203) or are they mostly in Portugal?
This research did not receive any special grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Author contributions
VK: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft. JP: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2024.1410628/full#supplementary-material
Footnotes
1. ^https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_675
2. ^https://www.naceweb.org/career-development/organizational-structure/reimagining-career-services/
3. ^https://capd.mit.edu/about/capd-staff
4. ^https://capd.mit.edu/about/peer-career-advisors
6. ^https://beam.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj10676/f/beam_org_chart_2021-01-08.pdf
7. ^https://careerdevelopment.princeton.edu/sites/careerdevelopment/files/media/undergraduate_four_year_plan_2019.pdf
8. ^https://form.typeform.com/to/xuvtOiJg?typeform-source=www.vitaeready.org
9. ^https://www.dges.gov.pt/pt/pagina/ensino-superior-em-numeros?plid=371
10. ^https://www.pordata.pt/Portugal/Alunos+matriculados+no+ensino+superior+total+e+por+sexo-1048
11. ^https://www.dgeec.mec.pt/np4/1109.html
12. ^The complete results of this study are available at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n5pusjcZXiEAC__AhjqFgVFxatBlll5K/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109741043576071327480&rtpof=true&sd=true
13. ^https://www.ipp.pt/ensino/apoio-aos-estudantes/gabinete-integracao-academica-profissional/empregabilidade-gestao-carreira/copy_of_GIAPTaxasdeparticipacao.pdf
14. ^https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/gabinete-de-emprego-ipvc/?originalSubdomain=pt
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Keywords: career services, higher education institutions, employability, type of service, accessibility and usability
Citation: Khurumova V and Pinto JC (2024) Career services at HEI’s: what are they offering? Front. Educ. 9:1410628. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1410628
Edited by:
Cláudia Andrade, Polytechnical Institute of Coimbra, PortugalReviewed by:
Cristina Corina Bentea, Dunarea de Jos University, RomaniaBenjamin Tak Yuen Chan, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, China
Copyright © 2024 Khurumova and Pinto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Joana Carneiro Pinto, am9hbmFjYXJuZWlyb3BpbnRvQHVjcC5wdA==