Investigation of factors influencing career choice among STEM undergraduates in Nigeria universities

Abstract

Shortage of expertise in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields have been reported over the years despite financial and social interventions by government through policies and efforts of stakeholders. Remediating the afore stated requires a retrospection into the factors responsible for learners’ choice and career orientation in STEM. As such, this study investigated undergraduates’ choice of STEM field and career orientation employing descriptive research. Undergraduates’ choice of career questionnaire with interpersonal, intrapersonal and career outcome expectancy components formed the instrument with reliability index of 0.86. Purposive sampling was employed in the selection of 200 undergraduates in STEM related disciplines from public universities in Nigeria. Three research questions were raised to evaluate the extent of agreement and variance to each of the factors while three hypotheses were formulated and tested using one-way ANOVA among undergraduates’ choices. From the findings, career outcome expectancy outclassed both interpersonal and intrapersonal factors as reason for career choice. This study recommends that factors considered in this study have the possibility of impacting how institutional policies, educational leaders, and stakeholders determine the kind of support/intervention expected to buffer career choice among STEM students.