Attitude towards Occupation after Graduation of Undergraduate Students: a Case Study of the Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University

Abstract

     Currently, Thailand is accelerating its development in many aspects and needs a large number of personnel as a mechanism for the country’s development. New graduates are an important source of human resources for the development. Therefore, it is imperative to know the concept of graduates’ careers after graduation. This research focuses on factors, attitudes, an analysis of attitude components as well as motivation guideline to motivate in occupation after graduation of agricultural students in Chiang Mai University. For data collected, 264 students were selected from 774 students of the Faculty of Agriculture by using online questionnaires. Obtained data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. The results shown that most of the samples (64.00%) were female with average age of 21.50 years old. The samples mostly (28.40%) were in the field of Animal Science and Aquaculture with 3.30 of GPA in average. Their parents were engaged in agriculture with 383,640.15 baht per year of average family income. The samples received 32,740.53 baht per month as an allowance income from their family. They had close friends of 2.94 in average with a high level of friends’ attachment (=4.13) and family attachment (=4.39). The samples had more attention on welfare benefits for themselves and their families than other work welfares. Additionally, the global trend had affected the occupation which require a higher quality of life. The overall occupational motivation (=4.56) and attitudes (=4.42) were at the highest level. An analysis of attitude components of 20 variables found the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity at 0.914 which was variable in agricultural occupation group was the most important. In terms of factor influencing student attitudes towards occupation after graduation, found 9 factors as follow: friends’ attachment, close friends, family attachment, career of mother, average family income per year, average allowance income from family, work welfare for themselves and family, salary advance exams, and motivation. Hence, the policy of digital studying process for occupational promotion of student after graduation would be a guideline helping in occupational decision of agricultural students in the future.