Rehabilitation Counselor Education Students' Career Goals: A Partial Replication Study

Rehabilitation counselor education (RCE) students from one RCE program in the Southeastern region of the United States were surveyed in 1993 and 2003 to determine their career goals and if career goals changed a decade later. Other goals were to assess influencing factors for entering rehabilitation counseling or rehabilitation related professions and for selecting this RCE program. This is a partial replication study of Emener, Tannenbaum, and Cady (1990) and Dixon, Emener, Kelley, and Wright (1999). Implications for marketing the rehabilitation counseling profession and RCE programs were provided including offering curricula that supports specialization, specialty certifications, and counselor licensure.  For rehabilitation counselor education (RCE) programs to remain relevant, viable, and attractive to students they must prepare students to enter a lifelong profession that has career options. The counseling profession, including rehabilitation counseling, is continually evolving and changing. As Emener, Evans, Lowe, and Richard (2001) pointed out, "over the past five decades, the one constant that has most affected RCEs [rehabilitation counselor educators] has been the phenomenon of change" (p.244). In recent years changes in the counseling profession have been influenced by many factors including managed care, third-party reimbursement systems, counselor licensure legislation, and an increasing number of counselors going into private counseling practice. Rehabilitation counseling has been influenced by these same factors along with changes related to disability insurance and policy, technology, and increasing career options. It is an important ongoing task for RCE programs to periodically assess students' career goals if they want to remain current with changes in the field and provide attractive educational options for prospective students. In addition, as pointed out by Goodwin (1986); Brodwin, Carlos, Orange, and Myers (1994); and Wilson, Rollins, and Doughty (2000), it is necessary to develop marketing and recruitment strategies for RCE programs as well as the rehabilitation counseling profession. Most RCE students go to work in a specialty area within the counseling and rehabilitation fields (Goodwin, 1992). This was supported by two studies of career goals of RCE students at the University of South Florida (USF) conducted by Emener, Tannenbaum, and Cady (1990) and Dixon, Emener, Kelley, and Wright (1999). In the Emener et al. study, 79.8% of graduate students reported having a specific career goal upon entering the USF RCE program. In a replicated study by Dixon et al. nine years later at the same USF RCE program, 85.9% of entering students had a specific career goal. "Addiction counselor" and "mental health counselor" in the Emener et al. study and the reverse order in the Dixon et al. study were the most frequently cited career goals. In addition, most students maintained their career goals throughout their RCE programs. This included 75.9% of students in the Emener et al. study and 73% in the Dixon et al. study. A follow-up study by Kelley, Dixon, Emener, and Wright (1999) of graduates of the USF RCE reported that 60% of recent graduates (1987-1997) and 39% of remote graduates (1972-1986) attained their original career goals. The reasons students selected a RCE program to achieve their career goals were varied. Some individuals' selection of a RCE program and rehabilitation counseling as a career choice was influenced by a personal experience with disability or having a close family member or friend with a disability (Emener et al., 1990; Glover-Graf & Janikowski, 2001). Students' choice of a RCE program was also influenced by the characteristics of the RCE program. Some of the highest ranking features reported by RCE students in a study by Crimando, Sanders-Henry, and Chandler (1988) were "academic reputation of the program", "curricula offerings", "job opportunities in the field", and "professional reputation of the faculty" (p. …

Field of study: Education