Date of Award
3-1-1986
Document Type
Dissertation - NSU Access Only
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Center for the Advancement of Education
Abstract
The problem at Sheridan Vocational-Technical Center was that too few Business and Office Occupations students were completing their vocational training and were, therefore, not gaining employment relating to their training. After 1986-87, according to recent State of Florida legislation, programs will be defunded if—as a result of follow-up studies—the placement rate of program completers falls below 60 percent. The purpose of this investigation was to study the impact of counselor intervention on student completion rates. The hypothesis was that the program completion rate of adult business students was dependent upon whether or not students were counseled prior to entering their programs. An important assumption was that students who completed their programs were better prepared for finding employment in their fields of training than were those who did not complete their full courses of study. The procedure were to include a control group, which consisted of those who saw no counselor prior to enrollment. This group was compared to an experimental group who did see a counselor. The population consisted of students who completed the fundamental business course. The dependent variable was program completion: the independent variable was counselor intervention. The technique used for treating the data was the Chi square. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the withdrawal rates of those who saw a guidance counselor and those who did not see a counselor at the onset of their programs. Two sets of recommendations from this study. First, a careful examination should be made of the current counseling situation to assess its effectiveness. Second, since the ultimate goal is a 60 percent placement rate of program completers, it is recommended that stronger accountability of student placement and follow-up being placed more directly on classroom teachers.