Working Paper #2010-058
Making your own future. Expectations and occupation choice
The choice of a university career has a major saying in the future
earnings and career opportunities of the individuals. In turn,
prospective university students make their decisions mainly motivated by
expectations of future rewards. Hence, understanding career choices
requires, first, to be able to understand the expectations that students
have. Second, it is necessary to increase our knowledge about the timing
and the source of information about wages and other forms of rewards.
Taking these prerequisites into account, this paper attempts to increase
our understanding of the motivations that students have and the
perceptions they form when confronted with the occupation choice. Based
on a survey to prospective university students in Argentina we will
first show how a seemingly homogeneous population exhibit different
perceptions and goals. Secondly, we explore the influences and sources
of information and actions that these individuals have used to decide
their future specialization. Finally, and referred to the occupation
rewards, we show that it is possible to aggregate individuals according
to their motivations, showing that it is necessary to include in our
analysis information and expectations about aspects different from
future income streams. This will prove to be of fundamental importance
in the attraction of students to technical and scientific related
disciplines.
- Keywords
-
- Occupational Choice
- Professions
- Public Policy UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872
- JEL codes
-
- J44
- J48
- J24
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Tacsir, E. (2010). Making your own future. Expectations and occupation choice (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2010-058). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=4020