More than 14,000 students who qualified for university have opted to forgo the once-coveted courses because they lacked guidelines to pave the way for their future schooling.
Thousands of school leavers are missing out on suitable college or career courses due to poor planning.
Students often make course choices for the wrong reasons. You would hear a student chose a certain university because of their social status, friends studying in the same school or relatives which may later result in dropping out after frustration of the turn out of events.
Many would complain that they had not received early advice on how this would shape their future college and career choices.
According to GTI media research, more than half (54 per cent) students acknowledged parents influence them on career choices or courses.
Students tend to take advice from anyone they think has an experience for instance their school mates but it may not always be right let alone be the best one.
The path followed by their seemingly successful peers might not help them to reach the same destination, their model adults must have gone through failures and their parents might be unaware of the latest industry demands.
To make sure that students have clarity of thought, career counsellors must be made available for students at all times.
From having counselling centres on career professionalism, many students will know what they need to become in future and this will help make a shift from the general understanding of life and work to a more specific understanding of the realistic and practical career options that are available to them.
Picking a career usually comes after choosing a course and if a student does not pick the right course, it would advertently affect their career choice.
A recent study showed that one in three students are unhappy with the course chosen which is nearly half a million dissatisfied university students.
This marks a true depiction of the importance of career guidance in schools.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
