akademisi.net-To further examine college choice, we tested whether participants would select more prestigious educational options when they knew they could choose directly to work in the industry they wanted, rather than choosing from among the offers they received from the vocational schools they considered. That is, we predicted that college-eligible students who considered college directly would prefer to work in the industry that they have actually been enrolled in, and that college-eligible students who considered college indirectly would prefer to work in the industry that they have.
In a preliminary analysis, we explored whether providing information on whether respondents intended to go directly into the industry, or whether they intended to join a vocational school after enrolling, affected whether they preferred the best college option. We found that more vocational students preferred the best option (the best college) when they had no intention of working in the industry they had chosen.
However, this pattern was reversed when respondents explicitly indicated that they wanted to enter the industry (e.g., “I like the work you do in your degree program,” “This career is really interesting to me”) rather than to work in it (“I like what you do in your program,” “I can see you working in this industry”).
Next, we asked whether college-eligible respondents who were currently in college (i.e., the students who were the focus of the main study) would prefer to work in the industry to which they have been admitted. We predicted that they would.
The fact that many of the respondents already indicated that they planned to join the industry in which they had enrolled could be accounted for by changing the response options. We created two different response choices that involved a choice about whether respondents planned to join the industry (i.e., whether they planned to join it after college) or before college.
We also created one response option that specifically asked respondents about their intended career goal. For this analysis, we expected that students in the industry would prefer a job in the industry. We predicted, however, that students in the industry would prefer a job in the industry to which they had been admitted.
Our analysis did not support these two different predictions. We expected students who had recently enrolled in college to prefer a job in the industry (and would thereby be more likely to enter the industry after college). We expected students who had entered a vocational school to prefer a job in the industry.
However, we did not expect that students who had been enrolled in college but were not planning to join the industry would prefer a job in the industry to which they had been admitted. In contrast, this was exactly what we found. Respondents who were planning to join the industry actually preferred a job in the industry (or were undecided) to a job in the industry to which they had been admitted.
This pattern did not occur among students who were planning to join the industry but were not planning to work in the industry. This was consistent with findings.
