旅游专业本科生择业标准及其对旅行社的就业认知

旅游专业学生在本行业就业率低的问题一直困扰着旅游学术界、教育界和旅游行业,不少学者从不同角度研究并试图解决这一问题,但却很少从学生择业标准的角度去考虑.文章运用并检验里查得森(Richardson)择业影响因素量表,测量旅游专业本科生的择业标准及其对旅行社的就业认知,结果表明:学生认为旅行社不具备其择业时最看重的因素(“融洽的同事关系”、“喜欢的工作”、“良好的晋升机会”)；并且学生认为旅行社具备的主要就业因素是其择业时最不看重的(“出国旅行的机会”、“专业对口”、“职业流动性”)；学生认为旅行社存在超工作时间、超工作量、晋升机制不合理、起薪不理想等行业不规范现状,但学生也认为旅行社具有锻造高技能、有责任感人才的就业优势.根据学生择业标准与旅行社的就业认知IPA分析结果,文章提出了相应的对策来改善旅游本科生行业就业率低的问题.

Criteria of Tourism Undergraduates’ Career Choice and Their Perceptions of Travel Agencies as a Job

The low rate of employment in the industry for tourism undergraduates has been troubling the academia,educational institutions and the industry.But research on students’ perceptions of tourism as a career for employment mainly concentrates on the effects of the industry characteristics,tourism courses,job satisfactions,and career orientation.It rarely explains the phenomenon and solves the problem from the undergraduates’ perspectives to explore the influencing factors when they consider a career and perceive tourism as a career choice.Furthermore,academic researchers usually take hotel as the field of tourism and seldom include travel agencies in their research of students’ perceptions of tourism employment.This article explores the factors influencing undergraduates’ choice of a career and their perceptions of travel agency as a career choice by analyzing a sample of 594 valid questionnaires.The study is an application of Richardson Scale Measurement among tourism undergraduates at Sun Yat-sen University and Jiangxi Normal University,and reports an IPA analysis with the collected data.Results indicates that:(1)Richardson Scale Measurement is a useful tool to measure the factors influencing Chinese tourism undergraduates,choice of a career and their perceptions of travel agency as a career choice.Data analysis result shows that the Cronbach(α) coefficient of the overall scale is 0.824,indicating a high reliability of the scale.It also has a good internal consistency reliability,and can be applied to measure students’ perceptions of tourism employment.(2)Compared with their career choice factors and their perceptions of travel agency as a career,students rate "colleagues that I can get along with","a job that I will find enjoyable",and "good promotion prospects" as the three most valuable factors,but they do not believe that travel agency will offer them.(3) Students think "the opportunity to travel abroad","a job where I can use my university degree",and "job mobility" are the most important factors when considering travel agency as a career choice,but they attach a very low value to them.(4) Through the IPA analysis with the data,the undergraduates’ negative perceptions of travel agency are: work time conflict with family life,heavy workload,and low starting salary.The positive perceptions are: travel agency can make high skills,and has a sense of responsibility.According to the results of this study,the reason why the low rate of employment in the industry for tourism undergraduates is that the students do not believe that tourism industry will offer the factors they find most valuable when choosing a career,and the factors they think tourism industry can offer are not valued by the students.This article also presents the appropriate countermeasures to improve the low rate of industry employment of tourism undergraduates.Hence,travel agency should continuously improve the work environment,and adjust recruitment policy to attract professional labors;educational institutions should actively develop the students’ positive perceptions of travel agency as a career choice;students should strengthen their professional ethics.