The Significance of Business Administration Education - Essay Example

?The Significance of Business Administration Education and Career Support at a Junior College in Japan Background and Objectives I work at a junior college in Japan as a…. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology defines a junior college as “an institution of higher education that serves a nearby region and plays an important role in the spread of vocational and higher education.” The types of higher educational institutions, providing education in Japan are: four year universities, offering four year courses, junior colleges, and technical colleges. Among these schools, junior colleges account for 32% of the total number of educational institutions. Since junior colleges, in general, have smaller numbers of students, their ratio of enrolled students does not exceed 5.1% of the total for higher educational institutions. I belong to the Department of Applied Business Studies, which is a part of Social Sciences Department. Comparing to the other field of studies in Japanese junior colleges, the total number of students enrolled in “social” fields less and stands at a mere 11.9%. Half of these junior college students either study educational fields, train to become Child Care Professionals or Preschool Teachers, or they pursue Home Economics and train to become Nutritionists. In other countries, students completing studies at short-term higher educational institutions are now being awarded degrees. Since March 2009, Japanese educational system also, responding to this trend, has adopted the practice of awarding associate degrees to students of junior college. As a result, it seems that growth and consolidation of junior college education is to be expected. However, in reality, the number of students who prefer to attend four year universities has been increasing while the number of junior college entrants has steadily been decreasing. In fact, many junior colleges are forced to close down every year due to a lack of sufficient enrollment. The number of junior colleges has reached its highest in Japan during 1996 but since then it has registered a steady decrease. At the junior college, where I work, enrollment has been decreasing as well. However, fortunately, the demand for seats in certain areas still remains. Some of the students are very nervous and they become uncertain whether they will be able to retain their interest and motivation throughout for graduating from a four year university. Besides, 80% of junior college students are females and parents often think that “a junior college that can be finished in two years is adequate for girls.” Some parents feel anxious about the additional financial burdens associated with paying extra tuition fee for a four-year university. In today’s knowledge-based economy, high school students from such families enroll in junior colleges on the belief that it is better to go to a junior college than to graduate from high school, or a career college, and land up in a job. In our department, they study subjects related to business administration. The curriculum contains a lot of practical subjects, such as information processing and bookkeeping. From interviewing the students as part of the entrance examination, it transpires that their motivation, for applying for business administration courses, is to study computers and bookkeeping. On the other hand, I have never heard a student say that he or she wants to study business administration because the genuine actually interest in it. The majority of students enroll for the course without any idea of what business administration is at all. Similarly, many students have actually entered my department without comparing our college to the other junior colleges or four year universities. They seem to feel that it will be easiest to attend our college either because it is close to their home or because the faculty, administrators, and enrolled students are very friendly. Once we meet other requirements and when it comes to choosing a field of study, students seem to feel that “maybe business administration will be beneficial to me when I look for a job.” Thus, the frame of mind of our students can be described in the following way: Despite feeling constrained by time, money, motivation, or all of the above, in order to live in a knowledge-based economy, they want to enter our school. Basically, this decision derives from the thought they would have a better chance at a good life if they graduate from a junior college rather than simply graduating from a high school or a vocational college. With this concept in mind, they enroll and find relief in the fact that they have finally made it to the college. To have “entered college” has the following connotations: In Japan, after the 1990s, it there is a general belief that the admission process for universities have failed. Of course, there are universities that still use strict selection procedures, but in my department the selection process cannot be perceived as functioning properly. Students who are admitted without having passed through a strict selection process are generally found to be weak, both academically and mentally. The general notion about such students is that they should not be admitted to a junior college. On the other hand, there are some people who believe that - since human abilities follow a Gaussian distribution - these students should just choose the path that best fits their academic abilities. If we look at it from this point of view, then an increasing rate of entrance to junior colleges can be said to be a “fallacy of composition.”1 However, it is quite natural for each individual to seek out all the opportunities that would help them in improving quality of their lives. It is becoming common practice in recent times, to expand career support at both junior colleges and four year universities. Even the junior college, where I work, provides various career support programs. Besides, the instructors are devoting as much time to career support as they do to teaching and in many cases they are focusing more on the former. But, do these efforts really help our students? I am going to discuss this question, in details as the purpose of this presentation is to prepare a study on how, while increasing the number of students who receive a higher education, we should accommodate students who are not completely prepared for such an education. 2. Job Search Summary Entrance to Japanese universities, both four year and junior college, commences in April and for graduation it begins in March. On an average, it takes four years to graduate from a four year university and two years for a junior college. Job hunting in Japan attains significance in the fall of the third year, for students in a four year university, and in the fall of the first year, for students in a junior college. Similarly, the flow of the common selection process begins with an “initial contact” between a student and a company, as a show of interest. Subsequently, students go to a company’s information session. The company screens the applicants’ resumes and interviews the candidates about three times. Finally, the company will inform the successful candidates of the company’s unofficial decision. There are many companies that also incorporate a written examination to this selection process. When a written examination does occur, often it is given at a relatively early stage in the selection process in order to narrow down the number of applicants for the first interview. A male Japanese student from a four year university might have initial contact with as many as 100 or 150 companies. It is also not uncommon to have initial contact with 50 companies, regardless of whether the student is male or female. On the other hand, the number of companies with which a junior college student has initial contact is comparatively lower. To begin with, there are many companies that do not employ junior college graduates. Both employers and students attach great importance to the fact that, in many cases, students who do not yet live on their own will have trouble commuting from their parents’ house (hereafter referred to as the home). According to the data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the nationwide average starting salary for a junior college graduate is \170,300 in 2010. However, the 2008 Household Expenditure Survey of The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications states that the national average monthly expenses for a single person were \172,000. Therefore, it will become difficult for junior college graduates to live by themselves as their earning will barely be sufficient to meet the expenses, leaving no scope for savings. As such, both companies and students avoid employment in an area where students need to live alone. As a consequence, the number of companies that accept junior college student applicants is has become much less. I have also noticed that, students in my department are slow starters when it comes to job hunting and they only apply to a few companies. Students who start applying for positions in the fall of their first year fall in the minority. Even if students make initial contact and participate in a company’s information session, many still hesitate when it comes to setting up the application screening process and the interview. For such students, thinking about writing down just four or five lines of personal information in a CV, or meeting with an unfamiliar adult for an interview, becomes on intimidating proposition. When I tell them that “A job search enters its key stage only after you are rejected from about five companies,” they reply by saying “I don’t think I can recover from the shock of being rejected by just one company.” Furthermore, it is part of a common job hunting practice to undergo the selection process for multiple companies at same time, but among our students many start looking for the next company only after they are rejected from the first. When I ask them why they do not apply to several companies simultaneously, they tell me that they cannot prepare for multiple company selection processes. Since they have not passed through the difficult exam process, it becomes difficult for them to get used to a system of multitasking. 3. Student Usage of My College and Department’s Career Support System My college has established a Career Center and an Extension Center to support students seeking employment. We even conduct a class called “Career Design” which intends to help students prepare for job searches. I have taught Business Administration, Management Theory, and Human Resource Management, in addition to the aforesaid “Career Design” class. I also have experience working on both Career Center and Extension Center affairs as an instructor. At the Career Center, students can peruse ads notifying vacancies in various companies and have consultations regarding interviews, submitting applications and ascertain employment opportunities that best suit them. Also, as of last year, the Career Center has begun providing services career counseling from a professional career counselor Besides, staff from “Hello Work” (a governmental unemployment office), after talking with students, will introduce them to jobs that are suitable - and for which they have an aptitude - from different among vacant positions. It is also desirable for first year students to come to the Career Center once in a week. However, they hardly do this and even among students in their second year, there are very few that regularly visit the center. Thus, it becomes necessary for staff members to call students in order to speak to them and convince them of the need to visit the Career Center. Many students do not even answer these calls. In the case of those who very rarely go to the center, it is up to the instructors of the “Career Design” class to take them directly to the Career Center. No matter how many times the instructors tell the students that the Career Center will help them with CV writing or practice interviews, there are many students who apply for jobs without making use of this resource. Instructors and Career Center staff admonish students that if they do not methodically receive directions from the Center and follow them meticulously, they will continue to fail in their applications over and over again. There are some students who take this advice to heart and go to the Career Center. However, since some students do not know Center staff members very well, there are those who feel that the instructors they meet with regularly are better, and so they seek advice from these instructors. In some cases, there are students who seek advice neither from instructors nor from the Career Center. At the Extension Center, students can take courses that support their job search efforts, which will lead them to the acquisition of qualifications that are effective for job searches. As for the acquisition of qualifications, aside from computer and bookkeeping courses that would be useful in any industry, students can take courses that provide industry specific qualifications, such as real estate broker registration classes, which will be specific to the real estate and finance industries, or medical administration classes that are specific to the medical industry. As far as lecturers for these courses are concerned, we invite specialists who teach qualification acquisition studies in vocational colleges. In other words, even while going to a junior college, our students can actually learn as if they are taking vocational college courses. If a junior college student goes to a vocational college and takes certain classes, besides tuition for the junior college, he would have to pay \200,000 or more in expenses. On the other hand, in my junior college if that same student spends just \5,000 registration fee burden and buys some supplies he or she can attend vocational college classes. In addition, if attendance is eighty percent or more, the registration fee will be reimbursed, and students can learn about acquiring qualifications for no more than the mere price of some supplies. Thus, in the practical sense, it transpires that our students can attend a junior college and gain the benefits of the attending a vocational college by merely paying for the former. However, most of the students become tired after taking regular junior college courses, and when their classes are done they remain hesitant to indulge in an extra chore of going to the Extension Center populate to study. There are also many students who undertake part-time jobs after class. Because of this, even if the Extension Center creates a new course, there are times when the minimum enrollment numbers to the same are not available. In several instances, even if a course starts up with a minimum number, many participants drop out from the class halfway through. Though my college undertakes necessary steps for improving the course content by carrying out questionnaire surveys at the extension centre, and revise the course materials, these efforts hardly fetch any fruitful outcomes. I am responsible for the “Career Design” Course. This course aims to achieve three goals such as: to inspire students to understand the working environments and to paint an image of the path that follows graduation from college, to make them understand what finding employment really means and to make sure that they learn the basics of an effective and meaningful job search method. I am also responsible for a “Human Resource Management Theory” course, but the “Career Design” course is far more difficult. When I explain the disparities between full-time employees and non-full-time employees, such as temporary or contract workers, in order teach students about various work environments, many students come up with a complaint that they do not like such “dark” stories and thus shy away from them. They tend to listen to stories that relate the joys associated with work, but when someone talks about how challenging a job can be, most of the students simply do not want to listen. In fact, many of them have said that such stories discover age them from the very idea of searching for a job the same types of group discussion that are commonly used for interviews. But then, even after I divide them into small groups and give them discussion topics, some of them just sit there with their heads down, waiting for the time to pass, and make no effort at all to initiate a discussion 4. Students who are likely to succeed in their job search and students who are not. On the flipside, there are some students who willingly attend class and eagerly search for a job. When they receive a tentative offer, they come and let me know and extend their gratitude towards me. In the case of students like these, I can forsee their success from the first semester of their first year. Students who are likely to do well on their job searches have the following commonalities. They are cheerful and can state their opinions clearly and precisely. They are prepared to listen to others and accept their suggestions or advices. Besides, they freely meet and interact with others. They are able to ask others for specific things. These characteristics cause them to ask staff or instructors at the Career Center things like, “I tried to write a CV, could you take a look?” And also, when they are rejected, they do not remain discouraged or rejected. Instead, they share their disappointment openly with staff, or an instructor. Additionally, they work on their shortcomings and this can result in establishing better plans for the next application. Even if they do not have a good academic record in high school, or they do not have good grades in junior college, they are able think about, and understand for themselves, what they were taught by others. This ties into their ability to learn how to write, through trial-and-error, a good essay and to be taught the tricks behind writing a good self-promotional CV, where they can express who they are as a person. They are able to see things from someone else’s point of view. Normally, this type of students, who can start a conversation by asking “Sir, do you have time now?”, will be able to guess what sort of mannerisms are expected of them during an interview. Especially after someone has explained to them how an interviewer, who must see dozens of students in a single day, might be feeling. When I look back now, I see that the students who were successful did not always stay until late at night to go to the Career Center and obtain the necessary qualifications. Rather, even if there were certain qualifications that were recommended to them for their desired industry or profession, they were all capable of deciding on their own which qualifications they needed. On the other hand, we can ask: “What are the common characteristics among the students who could not find a job after graduating and those who have decided on a career path but are forced to battle strenuously to be hired?” There are several types of students who are unsuccessful. Some of whom fall in the following categories: Students who are not able to socialize at all cannot even make eye contact with or talk to their peers in group work lessons in the class. Another category is students who are not ready to make compromises. A counterexample would be students who quickly receive an unofficial decision and who receive an explanation of their job/work conditions during an information session. They generally think, “Oh well, everywhere will be like this!” Even if they feel uncomfortable, somewhere inside themselves, about these conditions, they still take the job. They can come to terms with their expectations and reality. But, the second type of student, despite seeing many job postings, continues to say that there are no job postings that get them motivated to apply for a job because they are not willing to compromise. Students who are not used to approaching others: They come to a class often and are serious students. Their grades are good and there is no need to worry about them graduating. They listen sincerely to explanations regarding how to conduct a job search, but they find it hard to get going when the time for job hunting comes around. They look enviously at the other students who receive advice from me regarding their CVs or the interview process, but they cannot bring themselves to ask me for the same type of help. Students who are not able to find the energy in themselves to overcome hardships: Even if I give them some direction for correcting their CVs, or for an interview, they just do not display any enthusiasm when it comes to searching for their own answers. They go so far as to ask me to show them a revised draft of their CV, with all the corrections completed. In such cases, they generally, after two or three failed job searches, take a break from the job search indefinitely. 5. The Significance of Classes and Career Support Though the findings of my enquiry may have only provided an ambiguous image of the successful job search students and the unsuccessful ones, do not think that the instructors in my department would disagree with my assessment. Before I stated that I could tell which students would do well at job hunting, even when they were still in their first year. When these students first entered school, actually from before they entered college and were still just examinees touring the campus and receiving counseling, my colleagues and I often said to one another, “Job hunting will go well for that person.” If we can already estimate, with relative accuracy, who will succeed and who will not at job searching, even before they enter college, then what is the point of entering our junior college and learning business administration for the students who already have the will to search for a job? What is the significance of the career support that we are providing? Certainly, there are many students who have felt the significance. Those would be the students for whom job searches have gone well. They believed that, up until high school, their academic records were not very good and that they did not like school or were not good at school. For them, putting their understanding of the theories found in Business Administration, Business Management, and Human Resource Management Theory classes into words is difficult. But if we show them a TV drama or movie that closely reflects the conditions of those theories, they will show interest and understand what those theories are purporting. I have had students come and say “I experienced similar conditions to the ones in that movie at my part-time job. Business Management is actually pretty interesting!” There are even students who are bewildered to find themselves saying that studying is “fun.” When I ask what kind of management they would like to do if they find work and assume a position where they will manage people, they think seriously for a moment and then give me a good answer. They have practiced for job interviews so many times - in order to prepare for their job searches - and the considerations, points of view, and the thought patterns of the interviewers have been explained to them so many times, that they have developed a sense of what is expected of them in any job or work environment that they might land up in. As for those students who seemed to us like they would have trouble finding work, did they learn business management in our department and become knowledge? Were our efforts at career support helpful to them? Classes are supposed to be designed in such a manner, so as to be useful to students when they consider problems that will appear in a future business environment. However, no matter how many times I use the theory to organize thoughts and answer concrete questions, many students never attempt to imitate that behavior. Because of this, they cannot make use of what they have learned. To put it more precisely, there are many students who graduate without the idea that they can apply their learning to real-life situations. We can reduce the number of things we teach in class and make learning process, more slowly and precisely, with great care, so that students who “get it,” and have the desire to really understand the material, will, understand relevant theories correctly. But, in understanding such “thinking,” “interpreting,” and “arranging,” there are many students who do not know that there is a need to place the mental burden on them. Even though most students do not actually place that burden on their own heads, it is surprising to see how many of them remained unconfident about their intellectual performance. A certain female student never took a day-off from class and always appeared to conscientiously take notes, but her grades were extremely poor. When I asked her to show me the notes from a particular class, they were not forthcoming. She was taking notes on loose-leaves of paper, but they were all jammed helter-skelter, in no particular order, into a single file folder. When I pulled out a page at random, looked at it with her, and asked “what is the topic of discussion for this class?” She didnot say a single word. The words from the blackboard were copied down, but she never read over her notes after class. When I said, “notes are taken so you can read them back to yourself after class. Therefore, in order to be able to read them back to yourself, you should devise a system of notation and you should add clues that will help you to remember them.” She then looked at me like it was the first time she had heard such a thing. Here is a slightly revised version of her story. Up to now she would come in- to a place called “school” and, without knowing what was being said, simply copied the words from the blackboard into her notebook. So what exactly does that say about the twelve-plus years of classes she had taken up to this point in her school-life? The number of colleges that have the so-called “First Year Education for Freshmen” classes, which teaches students how to study properly at college, is increasing. We have even introduced a “First Year Education for Freshmen” course in our department. But, our course crams such things as taking notes, proper use of the library, report writing, how to give presentations and effective reading, into about 10 classes. These courses are taught uniformly regardless of what each individual student is lacking, how much they are behind, why they are behind, and when they started to struggle. As a result, it is difficult for these courses to be equally successful for all students. Thus, students take a lot of classes without being prepared. There are students who even take classes at the Extension Center apart from their classes at the college. Can their efforts be rewarded? Can they continue to study without tasting the fruits of their labor? There are many students who are not yet prepared to study at a college. Students who were successful in their job search were not always the ones who were frantically running off to the Extension Center in order to acquire the necessary qualifications. Taking this into account, rather than having a system for career support and an Extension Center that goes above-and-beyond standard “college curriculum” criteria, it might be better to simply have a system that supports student’s preparations to study at a junior college. The lack of preparedness for study at junior colleges is a serious problem. An even more serious concern is the attitude one has to take when students face people or events. For those students mentioned above, who are unsuccessful at job hunting, I made note of the following characteristics: They are not able to socialize at all, they are incapable of making compromises, they are not used to approaching others, and they are not able to find the energy in themselves to overcome hardships. In summary, it can be said that these types of students have problems associated with their attitude when facing people or events. This tendency is related to personality or character problems. But, unlike problems related to a student’s study habits, it is difficult to candidly point to problems associated with their attitude. Also, since this tendency has been wrapped up, for a very long time, with a student’s sense of values, experiences, and feelings, it has become a habit and it is very difficult to fix. This tendency will have an adverse effect on future job searches, but first it has an adverse effect on students who are at the level where they are receiving career support from a junior college. Thus, the significance of career support is influenced by whether or not students recognize this tendency and have the will power to change it. Whether the problem for students is a lack of preparedness for study at a junior college, or something associated with their attitude when facing people or events, they must start talking about these problems in order to work through them. And, in the end, we are the ones who might be tested on whether or not these students can open up their hearts to us. Read More