Family Background, Campus Experience and Job Searching

Career aspirations reflect the individual social desires.By conducting a questionnaire survey among a group of Chinese students, this study explores career aspirations of Chinese college students and examines the link between socio-economic background and career aspirations, as well as the link between campus experience and career aspirations.It is found that students from better-off socio-economic backgrounds, whose parents have higher educational attainment, higher occupational status and higher income, tend to have higher aspirations towards their future career. Students who focus more on academic study and are more satisfied with their campus environment and available academic resources also tend to have higher career aspirations. Significant predictors of career aspirations were also found in this study. Mother's educational attainment and occupation turn out to be the most important variables in socio-economic background, predicting both students' desired occupation and salary. Students' time spent studying, together with their degree of satisfaction with academic resources are essential campus experience variables, predicting both students' desired occupation and salary.