A Study On The Influencing Factors Of College Students' Professional Choice

With the coming of the 21 st century, and the deepen of the economic globalization, the developing of the country is increasingly depend on the people who are good at science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.Focus on the situation in our country, engineering is the largest subject whether in majors or students.While in view of the correlation studies, major choice in our country exist some unpleasant phenomenons, such as blind or just follow others, low satisfaction, imbalance of gender in engineering and so on. Basing on social cognitive theory and Lent and Hackett’ s Social Cognitive Career theory and their Social Cognitive Career Choice Mode(SCCCM) which put forward in 1994, this research try to analyze the effect and the path of background factors, self-efficacy, interest on major choice in engineering,and the way about decision-making. We think that the research is meaningful with the background of the revolution about gao kao and more and more diversified environment about major choosing, also give the assistance to high school graduates and college students.Using literature research to analyze the structure of social cognitive theory,explore the studies of major choice in engineering and empirical researches about SCCCM, to clarify the meaning of self-efficacy, interest, background factors. Then,make the investigation by using engineering major choice factors questionnaire,concluding self-efficacy questionnaire(math-physic-chemistry self-efficacy questionnaire and engineering self-efficacy questionnaire), background factors questionnaire and UNIACT vocational interest questionnaire, to 355 freshmen in engineering from University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai normal university, Shanghai University of Engineering Sciences.Through data-analyzing, we find the following conclusions:1. Basing on SCCCM model, we do some research with engineering self-efficacy,and we find that the self-efficacy of engineering can be measured from two parts,one is math-physic-chemistry self-efficacy, the second is engineering self-efficacy.While engineering self-efficacy’s measurement can be divided into four dimensions :basic ability, sense of control, information collection and career planning. According to this, author compiled the engineering self-efficacy questionnaire with a good reliability.2. The factors influence engineering major choice including background factors and personal preferences. Among them, the main background factors is gender,mother’s education level, family annual income, score, regional, professional popularity, parents and family’s advice, the employment situation. Personal preference factors is interest, self-efficacy.3. Math-physic-chemistry self-efficacy has a positive impact on engineering self-efficacy, and influence on engineering major choice. Interest can directly affect the major choice in engineering, and there is no evidence show that path is exist among interest and math-physic-chemistry self-efficacy, engineering self-efficacy which exist in SCCCM model.Research suggests that students are bound by the background factors when they making choice, insufficient for individual cognition, and social stereotypes affect male gender segregation in discipline. professional education in colleges and universities should be based on general education, school and families should guide the students to explore their interest, students should cultivate self-determination consciousness, reduce the utilitarian tendency to major choice, hold the consciousness of equality of men and women, women should break through the gender stereotype effect and explore themselves actively.