Independent researcher, Khulna University, Khulna-9208, Bangladesh

Extent research based on Gottfredsons theory, (1981) suggests that children begin to circumscribe their career options based on the information they get from their environment as the occupation is a strong determinant of a persons status within the community (Brown, 2002). Psychological theorist Holland, (1997) noted that culture has a significant impact on career choice. Besides, several psycho-logical and social factors influence a persons career choice decision (Hughes & Thomas, 2013). There-fore, planning a career becomes one of the hardest decisions to make in everyones life. 

But many researchers argue that socio-economic status (SES) is the major factor that influences career decision-making (Agarwala, 2008; Ferry, 2006; Ma & Yeh, 2005). SES is the position or social standing of an individual or group in any society (Thomson, 2018; Obiyo & Eze, 2015). The theoretical construct, socioeconomic status (SES), includes individual, household, and/or community access to resources. It is commonly defined as a combination of economic, social, and occupational status, and measured by income or wealth, education, and occupation (Psaki et al., 2014).  Centre for the Study of Higher Edu-cation, (2008) recommended inclusion of several other demographic factors such as parents education status, job status, parents income level, parents education level, society in which they belong inclu-ding a combination of all these factors as SES elements. The socioeconomic status of a student is determined by their parents occupation, educational level, and familys monthly income (Murry & Pujar, 2017). Several pieces of research (Arulmani et al., 2003; Garg et al., 2002) conclude that parents edu-cation level, occupation, and income influence their childrens career choices.  Doyle, (2011) showed that an approach to career decision-making is based on life experience from the environment which in turn contributes to a persons cultural capital.

A good portion of the people of Bangladesh are highly motivated for higher studies (Monem & Baniamin, 2011). The probable reason for the moti-vation for higher studies in this subcontinent is the social position of a person relies heavily on educational background, income, designation in the work place, etc. It is widely believed that the income and design-ation of a person fulfill the graduates expectations and guarantee a good life for them in the future. 

Furthermore, from a study of Doyle, (2011), it is evi-denced that university students from lower socio-economic backgrounds have seen career needs dif-ferently from the students from comparatively higher socio-economic backgrounds. Hence, that time is very crucial for tertiary level students to make decisions that will lead to dramatic changes in a graduates life (Abdo et al., 2016). Therefore, this study attempts to explore the influence of socio-economic status on the career choice of tertiary-level students of Bangla-desh.

Literature Review

Career Decision Making

Career is defined as the progress and actions taken by an individual throughout the lifetime which is directly related to the occupation. A career is com-posed of jobs, work accomplishments, and titles earned by an individual (Olaosebikan & Olusakin, 2014). Usually, people engage themselves in occupa-tional activities for earning their livelihoods and secured life, gaining power, achieving prestige and success, and also for psychosocial wellbeing (Abdi-noor, 2020). Bozgeyikli et al. (2009) argued that career decision is influenced by psychosocial, socio-economic, gender, ethnicity, race, social class, reli-gion, family influence, culture, education, emotional, and physical factors and these factors are inter-related. Career or occupation not only ensures econo mic solvency for a person but also it serves as a key source of identity formation (Super, 1980). On this point, career decision-making is really important as it builds the foundation of occupation as well as helps to build a career that appears to be a success (Abdinoor, 2020; Kumar, 2016). Extent pieces of research (Kumar, 2016; Bozgeyikli et al., 2009) dis-cussed that career decision-making is a life-long process that fundamentally starts at mid-adolescence and ends at retirement. 

Socio-economic Status

Social classes (higher class, middle class, and lower class) are composed of income, education, and occu-pation of a person (Thomson, 2018; Obiyo & Eze, 2015). Socio-economic status (SES) is considered an important indicator of family structure as it indicates the social position, power, and resources of a family. 

Family SES reflects parents educational and occu-pational attainment along with financial and social networking resources to which the children have access. Kuppuswami, (1981) developed a scale to measure the score of socioeconomic status that indi-cates that the socioeconomic status of a family is based on education, occupation, and income of the head of the family. According to Aggarwal et al. (2005), a person does not become the familys head unless he or she contributes to the family by earning money, and people with no income rely on the familys head, and their social status is determined by the familys head. On this note, SES significantly influences the youths career decision-making (Con-ger et al., 2010; Whiston & Keller, 2004).

Social Cognitive Career Theory 

Social Cognitive Career Theory is widely used for making predictions about peoples occupational con-siderations, academic achievements, career, and academic behaviors. Social Cognitive Career Theory investigates how beliefs about personal efficacy operate within a system of socio-cultural and socio-economic influences to affect career decision-mak-ing behavior (Lent et al., 1994). According to Social Cognitive Career Theory, personal inputs (e.g., gender, race, and personality), contextual factors (e.g., social/academic status, culture, and family), and learning experiences (e.g., work experiences) influence career decision-making in various ways (Orndorff & Herr, 1996). Moreover, Social cognitive career theory underlines a variety of cognitive vari-ables, including self-efficacy, expectations for results, and goals of selection related to academic performance and persistence behavior (Gore & Leu-werke, 2000). In this regard, career decisions are formulated through various processes and may be affected by different factors and variables. This study tried to apply the Social Cognitive Career Theory to identify the influence of socio-economic factors in choosing a career of the tertiary level students of Bangladesh. 

Age

Mudhovozi & Chireshe, (2012) noted that between the age ranges of six to eight years, most of the child ren develop their “tolerable sex type occupational boundaries.” Children and adolescents from nine to thirteen years of age begin to think about their social ly acceptable occupations which eventually depend on their ability and social class (Helwig, 2001). Like- wise, Otto, (2000) showed that from the high school level students start discussing their career plans with their parents.

Gender

Gender is one of the most important variables which influences the career choices and career development patterns of male and female adolescents (Rojewski & Hill, 1998; Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996; Davey & Stoppard, 1993).  Studies on gender and career deci-sion-making revealed that females have fewer career choices than males. From a very young age, children tend to believe that some specific jobs are only for boys and some others are only for girls (Mudhovozi & Chireshe, 2012). Moreover, females in most cases have a narrow range of occupational choices (Men-dez & Crawford, 2002; Looft, 1971). However, sev eral researchers claimed that women usually exp-erience educational discrimination in the family, resulting in fewer job options (Heins et al., 1982).

Religion

Duffy et al. (2010) argued that religion and spirit-uality may influence ones career development. On this note, the research of Duffy et al. (2010) pro-posed that religion and spirituality may relate to what individuals value from their work, feelings of support throughout the career development process. 

Moreover, they also stated that faith plays a critical role in life decisions such as career choices. For example, some Muslims are not interested in convent ional banking jobs as in Islam; occupation related to interest is prohibited (Thomas, 2006). In addition to this, Islam doesnt permit any kind of business or job which is prohibited, e.g., working or operating busi-ness related to Alcohol or Gambling. Similar to this, different religion has different tradition and customs, and people following that religion are more likely to follow that (Duffy & Lent, 2008).

Parents Education

Burlin, (1976), and Mau and Bikos, (2000) claimed that the education level of both parents has a strong influence on their childs career choices. In addition  Jones and Larke, (2003) stated that children have a higher understanding of work and career-related issues whose mothers have a minimum of two-year post-secondary degrees. On the other hand, Pappas and Kounenou, (2011) noted that fathers educat-ional degrees influence students more than their mothers. They also demonstrated that fathers who had completed elementary school had more influ-ence on their children compared to fathers who had finished vocational institutions.

Parents Occupation

Parents occupational status has a positive impact on their childrens career aspirations and career choices (Signer & Saldana, 2001; Wahl & Blackhurst, 2000; Burlin, 1976). Madarasova Geckova et al. (2010) found that in particular, adolescent boys career choices are strongly influenced by the fathers occu-pation and girls career choices are strongly influ-enced by the mothers occupation. Ferry, (2006) reported that children tend to make their career choice in accordance with their parents occupation and also try to attain the experience and information from their parents prospective careers.  

Parents Income

Several researchers agreed that parental income and social status have an impact on the occupational choice of their children. Obiyo & Eze, (2015) stated that children from higher-income families have higher career aspirations (e.g., professional execu-tive) whereas children from lower income families are more likely to prefer skilled jobs. Obiyo and Eze, (2015) also showed that both high and low-income parents wanted to make their children educated by which their children can occupy prestigious jobs.

Family Influence

Family influence means the influence of the parents and siblings on a particular person (Abdo et al., 2016). Parents usually urge their kids to earn a decent salary at constant employment to have a happy and secure future (Napompech, 2011). By supporting particular activities, parents can show their preference in choosing a certain career. Com-monly, parent(s) tend to point out additional support for occupational choices that reflect their personal preferences (Kniveton, 2004).

This study adopted a quantitative research method. The students of all the Public Universities, Private Universities, and National universities were targeted for the survey. A structured questionnaire was deve-loped and administered via Google Form for collect-ing necessary data. The study instrument was deve-loped using Social Cognitive Career Theory and was modified to fit into the local context. The question-naire was split into six sections. Section A was designed to collect respondents personal inform ation including five multiple-choice questions. Section B contained four closed-ended questions designed to collect academic information of the parti cipants which include the type of university, level of education, academic year, and participants study area. Section C was coined out with two close-ended questions designed to collect information regarding the career choice of the participants which include desired place for building a career and desired career choice of the participants. Section D was designed to collect information regarding family influence which includes the most influential person in career deci-sion making and there was only one close-ended question. Section E incorporated six closed-ended questions designed to collect information regarding the educational status, occupation, and monthly in-come of the parents of the respondents. Section F contained six questions designed to identify the per-ception of the respondents regarding their career decision-making. The questionnaire in Google Form was forwarded to the target students through their valid Facebook account and eventually, 563 valid responses were obtained. The data collection period of this study was between the second weeks of November 2020 till the first week of January 2021. 

SPSS (Version, 20) was used to analyze the data. In the first stage, descriptive statistics was used to gain a better understanding of the participants personal characteristics, academic information, socioeconomic status, career choice, and family influence. Follow-ing that, the Chi-square (χ2) test was used to deter-mine the statistical significance of the relationship between career decision-making and socio-economic status. 

Table 1 shows that 68.7% of the participants belong to the age group between 21 and 25. More than half of the respondents (58.6%) are male, the majority (71.8%) of the respondents are Muslim and 52% of them are living in urban areas while 24.2% are living in rural areas. Besides, 39.6% of the respondents are residing with family during their study period while the remaining 60.4% reside either in the hall or in a student mess.  

Table 1: Personal information of the participants.

Table 2 shows that 60.9% of the participants are from Public universities whereas only 20.6% are from Private universities and 18.5% of participants are from national universities. Table 2 also indicates that in terms of educational standing, the majority of the respondents (64.7%) are in the undergraduate level, 33.2% of them are studying in the second year. The table also presents that the highest number of participants (45.6%) are studying science, while 13.5% are studying arts and Humanities. Table 3 presents that 39.3% of participants fathers edu-cational level is H.S.C while 30.4% of participants fathers have completed graduation and above degree. However, only 5.5% of participants fathers are illiterate. In terms of mothers education, 26.8% of participants mothers have completed HSC and 20.4 % of participants mothers have completed gra-duation and above degree. Besides, only 6% of parti-cipants mothers are illiterate.

Table 3: Parents Educational status of the parti-cipants.

Table 4 indicates that the fathers of 26.6% of res-pondents work in the private sector, 25.4% are self-employed, 19.9% are in the government sector and 1.1% is unemployed. The table also shows that more than half of the respondents mothers (54%) are housewives; whereas only 10.5% are government employees, 7.6% are working in the private sector and 9.6% are professionals. Table 5 shows that 36.8% of respondents fathers monthly income is between 20,001 BDT and 40,000 BDT, 43.1% have earnings of more than TK. 40,000.00 per month and the remaining 19.0% of the respondents fathers have below TK. 20,000.00 income per month. Besides, 54.0% of respondents mother has no income, and 20.1% have more than TK. 40,000.00 per month; while the remaining 26% have monthly income TK. 40,000 or less. Table 6 indicates that more than half of the respondents (57.4%) want to build their career in Bangladesh. The table also indicates that 51% of the respondents prefer govern ment jobs whereas 32.3% of respondents prefer private jobs. The table further shows that 12.4 % of the respondents want to be self-employed and only 4.3% prefer engineering as their desired career. 

Table 5: Parents Income (Monthly) status of the participants.

Table 7 presents that 35.2% of respondents are influ enced by their siblings in terms of making their career decision. The table also shows that 30% of respondents are influenced by their mother and 21% are influenced by their father. However, 13.9% of participants are influenced by someone other than their family.

Pearsons Chi-square test (χ2) is executed in this study to expound on the influence of socioeconomic status on career decision-making among tertiary level students, presented in Table 8, indicating that students age, religion, place of residence, and resid-ing while studying is significantly associated with their career-decision making whereas there is no significant relationship of gender (p>.933) with career-decision making. This Table also shows that a significant association exists between the most influential person and career-decision making (p< 0.001). 

Table 8 also indicates that the educational back-ground of the father and mother of the students are highly associated with their career-decision making (p < 0.000 & p < 0.000) respectively. Besides, fat-hers and mothers occupation have also a significant relation on students career-decision making (p < 0.000 & p < 0.000 respectively). The table further indicates that the fathers income (p > 0.066) has no significant impact on the students career decision-making although the mothers income (p < 0.000) is positively associated with the students career decision-making. 

The study findings suggest that age has a significant (p< 0.000) relationship with career decision-making. Human beings have different tastes, different choices from one another. This taste, choice also varies from age to age. What we like at age twenty may not be the same as when we are in twenty-five and so is our career decision-making; it also varies due to age differences. This finding is in line with the study of (Mudhovozi & Chireshe, 2012; Helwig, 2001; Cook et al., 1996). This result also reveals that gender is not significantly associated (p > 0.933) with career decision-making. Generally, there is a belief in this society that female has fewer career choices and also they are indifferent to their own career decision-making than their male counterparts. But this study finds that male and female has an equal perception of their career decision-making process. The finding of this study is not consistent with previous studies (Mendez & Crawford, 2002; Looft, 1971). This study also reveals that religion is significantly associated (p < 0.000) with career-decision making. In our society, a good portion of people is influenced by their religion while choosing their occupations. This finding is in line with the study of Duffy and Lent, (2008) and Duffy et al. (2010). Considering the different dimensions of Bangladesh, researchers have introduced a new variable “place of residence”. The result is significantly (p<0.000) associated with career decision-making. This study finds that the opinion of respondents is significantly different because of the place they live in (e.g., the facilities available in Dhaka are much more different than in Shamnagar, Satkhira). Analyzing different dimen-sions of Bangladesh, researchers have introduced another new variable “residing while study”. The result is significantly (p < 0.000) associated with career decision-making. During study life, students may live with their family, or in a student mess or a university hall. Students who live in the family generally are influenced by their family members, on the other hand, who live in a student mess or a university hall may often be influenced by their friends or university senior.  In every family, there is a person with whom we are attached the most. It may be a father, mother, or sibling(s) who influence other family members to make a decision. Usually, we want to choose a profession like our mother, father, or siblings because parents always want their child-ren to earn a decent salary with a secured life as they did (Abdo et al., 2016).The findings of this study depict that influence of family member son students career decision-making is significant (p<0.001). The findings of this study are in line with the earlier studies (Abdo et al., 2016). 

Generally, an educated parent can provide more insight into his/her child regarding career decision-making than an uneducated parent. On the other hand, uneducated parents may not be that much cap-able of making their children understand what is suitable for them. The study finds that children of less-educated parents (education qualification is either below S.S.C or S.S.C) have more preference for Government Service. Findings also suggest that students make their career decision considering salary packages, power, freedom-autonomy, pre-stige, job security, etc. and their parents education has a significant impact on this. The study findings further indicate that both fathers (p<0.000) and mothers (p<0.000) educational status are highly significant with students career decision-making. These findings are consistent with the study of Kra-cke (1997). Parents occupation may also play a vital role in students career decision-making and He also identified that children of working parents are a bit different than others (Wahl & Blackhurst, 2000). The findings also show that the occupations of both the fathers (p<0.000) and mothers (p<0.000) are highly significant with students career decision-making. These findings are in line with the study of Burlin, (1976). This study also reveals that students from different parental occupational backgrounds have different opinions or views regarding career decision-making. Findings of this study show that parents who are in a Government job, the majority of their son/daughter have more preferences on Govt. job. Moreover, for students whose father or mother is working in private service, more than half of them consider job security as a very vital issue for choos-ing a career. The result illustrates that fathers monthly income is not significantly associated with students career decision-making (p>0.066). Where previous studies found a significant relationship bet-ween fathers income and students career decisions (Obiyo & Eze, 2015; Mau & Bikos, 2000). Usually, students fathers income level influences them to make their career decision. Some students may choose their occupation considering their fathers income level. But the outcome of this study shows that students career decision-making is not influen-ced by their fathers income level. Rather, students mothers monthly income influences their career decision-making (p<0.000). Students might choose a career considering job security, salary packages, freedom and autonomy, prestige, the power asso-ciated with the job. The findings show that more than half of the students consider salary package is important for making a career decision whose mot-hers have no income. These findings are consistent with previous studies (Obiyo & Eze, 2015; Mau & Bikos, 2000).

Career decision-making being very crucial in a students life, children and students get highly influenced by their surroundings that may influence them to expose their potential for their personal and social development. Career decision-making is a growing issue all over the world and selecting an appropriate career is a big task for students especi-ally at the tertiary level. The career decision-making of tertiary-level students is commonly influenced by their socio-economic status in Bangladesh. The find-ings are consistent with the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) that indicates that personal inputs (e.g. gender, race, and personality), contextual fact-ors (e.g. social/academic status, culture, and family), and learning experiences (e.g. work experiences) influence career decision-making. This present study accepts that socio-economic status like age, religion, place of residence, residing while studying, educat-ional status of their parents, occupation of their parents, and monthly income of their mother are associated with their career decision making. Be-sides, the study findings indicate that family influ-ences the overall career choice and decision-making process of a student where gender and fathers income barely play any significant role. Future research may be carried out on the influence of aca-demic dynamics and personal characteristics on career decision-making, the influence of gender differences in career choices and decision-making process, the impact of social capital on career deve-lopment, effects of career choice on academic achievements, and so on can be carried out to pro-vide directions for the future generations who will build the nation with high motivation and deve-lopment. 

The authors are thankful to the participants who provided insightful responses and contributed their time to the studys completion.

The author(s) declaring that there are no potential conflicts of interest concerning the research, author-ship, and/or publication of this article.