Impact of a Constructivist Career Course on Academic Performance and Graduation Outcomes

Abstract

Career planning courses are one of the most effective ways to improve career development, and the benefits to career decision-making are well documented. The research base regarding whether career courses contribute to academic outcomes is less well-developed. Although recent findings suggest that career courses may improve retention in the first- and second-year of college, it is not clear that these gains extend to graduation. Hence, we explored years to graduation, credit completion, and cumulative grade point average for 103 university students enrolled in a constructivist career course and 107 students in a comparison group. We also included race or ethnicity as an independent variable. Using composite ACT score and high school rank as covariates, we found no effect for the career course on cumulative grade point average, years to graduation, or credit completion. Additionally, there was no effect for race or ethnicity. Implications for the need to develop more upper division career courses are discussed.