Career Readiness of the Office Technology and Management Students in Polytechnics in Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu States, Nigeria

This study seeks to assess the career readiness of Office Technology and Management students in polytechnics in Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu state. Career readiness is a measure of the extent to which the OTM students possess the skills and attitudes needed for advancing in their career path. The career readiness of the students was measured using six indicators; office skills, managerial skills, entrepreneurial skills, ICT skills, communication skills and socio-psychological skills. The study employed a survey research design and polytechnics offering OTM in Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu state were selected for the study. Seven research questions and three hypotheses guided the study, 179 HND II students offering OTM constituted the population, and no sample was taken because of the manageable size of the population. Structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The instrument was structured on a five point scale, type in line with the indicators for measuring the career readiness of the OTM students. The instrument was face validated and trial tested on 35 OTM students from Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo and a reliability coefficient of 0.95 was obtained. The instrument was administered to the respondents and data collected was analysed accordingly. Mean was used to answer research question 1 to 6 while research question 7 was computed using the Arowolo & Ede (2012) modified formula for computing readiness index. Hypothesis 1 and 2 were tested using t-test at . 05 level of significance while hypothesis 3 was tested using ANOVA at . 05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed a low career readiness index of 2.43 for the OTM students in the Polytechnics in Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu State. The indicators for measuring career readiness showed that the students are lacking in office skills, managerial skills, entrepreneurial skills and communication skills but rated very high in ICT skills and socio-psychological skills. The low career readiness index has great implication for OTM programme in south east Nigeria and it justifies the opinion in many researches that graduates of the Nigerian higher education institutions are not employable. The study reveals that much of what is done in the classroom are mere theoretical rather than practical. It was therefore recommended among others that the polytechnics should strengthen their partnership with industry for work based training of their students and a re-evaluation of the programme should be conducted to ascertain the possible strategies for effective teaching and learning of office technology and management courses. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Background of the Study Career choice has been the major content of vocatio nal advocacy. However, preparedness to take advantage of the openings in t he area of career choice is more important than the mere choice of a career. To develop a care er is a lifetime process encompassing the growth and change processes of childhood, through f ormal education at school throughout a person’s working adulthood and into retirement. Car eer development occurs through life and it is enhanced by lifelong learning. The term caree r as defined by Herr, Cramer and Niles (2004) is a sequence of interaction of individuals with society, education and organisations throughout their lifespan. A career can be defined as a pattern of work experiences comprising the entire life span of a person and whi ch is generally seen with regard to a number of phases or stages reflecting the transitio fr m one stage of life to the next (Weinert, 2001). Similarly, Collin (1998) explains that the term career arises from the interaction of individuals with organisations and s ociety. This interaction, as Savickas (2009) proposes, is no longer merely just a sequence of jo bs but is now a story or an identity that working people build about themselves. Developing a career is as complex as personality de velopment, which is not just a one shot event. Developing a career is not just a decis ion that takes place at the entry point to a job, but it involves the totality of an individual’ s psychological, sociological, and educational events which eventually results into occupational c hoi e and other life roles. The quality of this career development significantly determines th e nature and quality of individuals’ lives: the kind of people they become, the sense of purpos e they have, the income at their disposal.