Higher Education is generally regarded as a pathway to career opportunities, and research shows that students' expectations of their career success while they are studying are an important predictor of their motivation and educational success. But, there is a lack of understanding about how students define career success, and identities and how personal characteristics, like race, gender and sexuality, intersect with these ideas of what success looks like
By: Michelle Ryan, Daniela Fernández and Christopher Begeny
Posted on 24 February 2023
Key findings
In online written interviews with 36 university students in the United Kingdom, we examine how students define career success and how they perceive their identity (gender, socioeconomic status) experiences underpinning these definitions. We analysed three main definitional themes:
- Career success as personal development
- Career success as individual mobility
- Lack of clarity about what career success is
Findings suggest that gender and socioeconomic experiences had an important role in students' understanding of career success, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Indeed, in the intersection of gender and socioeconomic status, inequalities persist: female students anticipated difficulties in terms of work-life balance and gender stereotypes that constrained their career success definitions. Moreover, family experiences were important to understand students' definitions of career success, particularly for disadvantaged socioeconomic groups.
The current research sheds light on an important paradox in HE organisations: while students tend to define career success in relatively individualistic ways, such as individual mobility, financial success, or personal development, it was clear that their social identities (e.g., gender, socioeconomic status) and related experiences played an important role in creating definitions of career success. This further implies that when universities encourage a perception of career success as individual mobility, for example, having better job opportunities, or by espousing the belief that higher education and/or professional sectors are truly meritocratic-this will not always align with, and may create tension for, students from disadvantaged groups.
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