Analysis of Guidance and Counselling Services at Higher Education in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

In this century, the world is undergoing many changes in social and economic arena. All these changes are opening door to many opportunities for young people who wish to enter in professional life; and choosing a career is becoming a complex task. The students when entering and leaving the higher education are required to explore their prospects at national and global level (Gybers, 2001). Thus, higher education institutions are required to offer the information through guidance and counselling services. In Pakistan, there are limited guidance and counselling services in higher education.  Therefore, the current study was designed to investigate the need of career development at higher education level. The objectives of the study were to; (1) find out the existing practices of guidance and career development; (2) investigate the need of educational, social, emotional and psychological dimension of guidance and counselling, (3) explore the students’ need of guidance and counselling regarding career selection. All the public sector universities of Punjab were the population of the study. Cluster sampling technique was used at first stage for the selection of universities, and stratifies sampling technique were used for the selection of sample. Four universities were selected as cluster and 1003 students (579 female and 424 male) were selected from twenty departments from all four universities. A self-developed instrument was the tool to collect data; the instrument was based on five Likert scale. The tool was pilot-tested in a local university for the reliability of instrument. Cronbach Alpha test was applied and the value of this test was 0.853; the value showed the reliability of instrument. For the purpose of derivation of results, the data were analyzed through percentage and ANOVA by using SPSS. The results of the study showed that although there is some Guidance and Counselling practices exist in some of universities, but working at limited scale is not enough for the population of students enrolled in the universities. But, there is need of guidance and counselling educational, social, emotional, and psychological and career selection in all universities. Need of Guidance & counselling for career selection had been profoundly felt. The comparison among universities Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan was found to be in difference with the rest of three universities on prevailing practices of Guidance & counselling. In Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, there was more need of all educational, social, emotional, psychological and career selection of guidance and counselling.