Abstract:
Career choice is in this context is defined as choosing one profession over others. Choosing the correct career course is becoming more and more significant for the youth in the 21st century as they have to take into consideration many things when choosing a career like peer pressure, parental advice, age and gender. The main objective of the study was to determine the factors influencing choice of careers among university students in the school of Business and Economics in Kisii University. The specific objectives of the study were to; determine whether gender, Age, peer group and parents do influence the students in career choice. The target population for this study was 1998 students in the School of Business and Economics. A sample size of 385 was used. The study adopted stratified random sampling technique to obtain data from all school of Business and Economics students in Main Campus. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Data was collected through self–administered questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was determined by the supervisors. Testing for reliability; Cronbach’s Alpha Co-efficient was calculated on the piloted questionnaires and the result was 0.76 confirming reliability of the research instruments. Data was tabulated and the measures of central tendency and weighted mean used for analysis after which results were summarized in tables, charts and graphs. Results revealed that gender strongly influenced the student’s career choice. The findings also showed that age is the second strongest factor influencing the choice of career. The study also found out that Peer group and parental guidance had a moderate influence on the student’s choice of career. The study made the following recommendation; a lot of emphasis on development of well nurtured career guidance department should be established in Kisii University main campus to help our students with career guidance, this is due to the findings that students need information on career prospects that they take. Future research should also be done on private Universities because this study was conducted in a public University, the study also concentrated on the students in the school of Business and Economics, a similar research can be carried out in other schools in Kisii University and also in its satellite campuses.
