Facing fragmented labour markets: Individual variables and the decision-making ability of humanities students

Abstract

While humanities graduates can aspire to many fields of work, these labour markets are mostly fragmented and relatively small. In order to be able to enter one of these potential professional fields in a targeted and successful manner, students in the humanities need to develop an individual professional profile. This profile comprises individual characteristics and competencies which include but also go beyond the qualifications from the study programme. Therefore, the authors postulate that specifically students in the humanities have to make many decisions in the course of their studies to prepare for a targeted career entry. From this background, it is important to know what factors are connected with their decision-making ability. This exploratory study examines the relationship of various individual factors with career decision-making adaptability (CDA) and thus on the decision-making competence on a sample of 872 humanities students from German and Swiss universities. A significant relationship with self-efficacy, conscientiousness, perseverance and professional information on CDA was found. The decision-making competence of teacher-training and non-teacher training students did not vary significantly. This study is based on the situation in German-speaking countries, but is also intended to be a stimulus for international comparison.