As an educational institution, the university has an obligation to provide students with diverse educational experiences so that they can explore and prepare for their own career.
This study analyzed the experience of college students receiving career education from their universities and analyzed the difference of career development competency according to career education experience. In this study, the data of 2,906 students of 21 universities selected as (Program for Industrial needs-Matched Education:PRIME) was analyzed. Through factor analysis of 12 representative career education activities, we could find that career education experiences is composed of two factors; self-directed career education experience focused on non-curricular activities and university-initiated career education experience focused on career education courses. In addition, career education experience could be analyzed in two dimensions, quantitative experience and qualitative satisfaction. We could find that university-initiated career education is more actively offered at all 21 universities than self-directed career education. There are significant differences among universities. Some universities provide actively both self-initiated and university -initiated career education, while other universities provided less in both areas. As a result of analyzing the satisfaction of experienced students, it is close to the satisfaction of 3 points out of 4 points. Satisfaction with experienced students is generally high. Variances between universities appear. When comparing two aspects of experience and satisfaction, there are universities in both areas that are below average, schools with significantly above average, some schools with relatively rich experiences but low quality.
We analyzed the relationships between career development readiness, entrepreneurship, and 5 core competences(communcation, interpersonal, global, self-managment, resource mangement), with career experience and satisfaction as independent variables. As a result of controlling and regression analysis of gender, grade, school, and study fields, experience of career education, especially university-initiated career education experience showed significantly positive relationship with career development capability, such as self-understanding, knowledge of major and occupation, self-efficacy on the relationship utilization, self-efficacy on decision-making, entrepreneurial competence, attitude, will, self-management competence, interpersonal competence. However, career education experience has negative relationship with K-CESA s cognitive competence, such as communication capacity, resource information utilization capability, and global competence. The analysis on the relationship of satisfaction of career education with career competence shows similar results, but the relationship is not so clear compared to career education experience.
The types of career education experience such as self-directed vs university-initiated career education, quantitative experience and qualitative satisfaction of the career education figured out in this study can contribute to the promotion of effective support by both individual universities and policy makers for the career development of college students. It is expected the follow up study to analyze causal relationship between career education and career development competence.