Unity and relevance: Envisioning career counselling’s future in higher education

Abstract

South African institutions of higher education seek to innovate their practices to more inclusively, effectively, and justly serve the needs of a diverse student population. Career counselling shares in this aim in an age of ever-widening globalization and burgeoning information technology. Counsellors around the globe must increasingly move to adapt career development paradigms and practices to better account for and assist people to navigate the complexities of work and a work world in seemingly constant flux. Four strategies offer an organizing framework for envisioning career counselling’s future both globally and locally within the context of South African higher education. These
strategies concern (1) reunifying around the theme of empowering workers to adapt; (2) renovating career counselling’s foundations in individual differences and development; (3) renewing attention to social class and culture; and (4) reconciling positivist and constructivist perspectives on career to situate work and career concerns within the
contexts of people’s developing life stories. Moving toward unity and relevance in career counselling will require a sustained and substantial effort on the part of all who hold stake in higher education.