On the final day of Softwarica College’s 11th Higher Education and Career Fair 2012 sponsored by Republica, a lot of young students were seen looking for guidance on their future career path.

There were a lot of career counseling stalls that helped young students find out exactly what they want to do and what field of education they want to pursue.

The expo, which ran for four days at the Bhrikuti Mandap Exhibition Hall, saw a lot of young students looking for information on colleges around and outside Nepal and also crowding counseling stalls.

“There are a lot of students who come to us and have no idea what they want to study,” shares Shankar Kandel, Counselor at Synergy Career Consultants. “We have a system with young students who don’t have any idea about what they want to do. We show them prospective positions; we tell them what they have to study and what kind of jobs they can opt for once they graduate. But at the end of the day, their decisions are their own and all we do as counselors are show them what degrees are good for them,” he adds.

Stereotyping also plays a big part in a student’s career. Society labels young students according to their academic merits and not on the basis of what they really want to do.

Young students are easily sidetracked because their parents think that students with exceptionally high scores should opt for science, and people with the lowest scores would do better in humanities. But making decisions because of societal pressures can trap students in a field that they have no interest in.

“I think career counseling is a very important part of every student’s decision-making process,” says Prashanna Kumar Aryal, Senior Career Counselor at Whitefield International College. “Out of all the students who have visited our stall here, 15 percent of them have no idea what field they want to get into and young people usually don’t know what they want to do in the future. This is a very important time for counselors to help these students figure out what they want and make sure that the decisions that they take now they don’t regret in the future,” he adds.

Students opting for education aboard have an even more difficult time because they are not aware of the rules and regulations of the respective country.

They have no idea about the application process and usually tend to get scared away by the high tuition fees. But many colleges aboard have scholarship programs and educational loans that they can take. But since students are not informed well enough, counseling sessions can help students get ideas of how education abroad can be feasible.

“People usually avoid applying to the UK because they have been falsely informed that getting a visa is difficult. But the fact is that if students are genuine and have been enrolled in a respectable government college, then getting a student visa is very simple,” says Siobhan FitzPatrick, Consultant at International English Language & Consultancy, adding, “The UK is very affordable as well, if you know how to manage things. Students can opt for a 25% tuition reduction and can work for 20 hours a week for very good pay. Students think that if they go to study in the UK, their parents have to take on the burden of educating them. But they don’t realize that if students are determined enough, it’s very possible to fund their living expenses and part of their tuition as well.”

The Higher Education & Career Fair is the oldest education event that started 12 years ago in 2002. The expo has been providing platforms for young students to gather information on colleges and higher education.

source: republica,25 June 2012