Perceived university career guidance, career adaptability, and school-to-work transition readiness among vocational and technical education students in South-East Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract The transition from higher education to employment is a critical developmental milestone that requires both institutional support and individual psychological resources. Yet multi-institutional structural evidence linking perceived career guidance, career adaptability, and transition readiness within Nigerian and Sub-Saharan African Vocational and Technical Education (VTE) contexts remains scarce. This study examined the association between perceived university career guidance and school-to-work transition readiness among final-year VTE students in South-East Nigeria. It tested whether career adaptability statistically accounted for part of this association. An explanatory cross-sectional survey design was employed. Data were collected from 178 final-year VTE undergraduate students enrolled in four public universities using adapted multi-item questionnaire measures of perceived university career guidance, career adaptability, and school-to-work transition readiness. Structural equation modelling (SEM) with maximum likelihood estimation and bootstrapped mediation analysis (5,000 resamples) was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The findings indicated that perceived university career guidance was positively associated with career adaptability (β = 0.51, p < .001, R² = 0.260) and with school-to-work transition readiness (β = 0.19, p = .014), while career adaptability was positively associated with school-to-work transition readiness (β = 0.38, p < .001). Bootstrapping further indicated that career adaptability partially mediated the association between perceived university career guidance and transition readiness (indirect effect = 0.194, 95% CI [0.114, 0.282]), statistically accounting for approximately 51.3% of the total association (total effect = 0.378, 95% CI [0.233, 0.518]). These findings are consistent with the proposition that university career guidance is associated with stronger transition readiness both directly and by way of students’ adaptive psychological resources. The findings are consistent with applying Career Construction Theory in a Nigerian vocational-education context. Social Cognitive Career Theory is discussed as a complementary interpretive framework, though its self-efficacy and outcome-expectation mechanisms were not directly measured in this cross-sectional design. The findings have implications for educational psychologists, career counsellors, higher education institutions, and policymakers interested in strengthening career guidance provision and graduate employability preparation within Nigerian VTE programmes.