How to Settle on a Career Path for International Students: The Application of Social Cognitive Career Theory

Abstract: International students comprise a substantial population in higher education, which reached over a 1.2 million in 2021 (SEVIS, 2021). While they are a large pool of highly educated talents and human resources that host countries can benefit from, there has been a drop in the total number of international students at U.S. universities since 2016. This can be attributed partially to not only the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak but also the changes in immigration laws or “America first” policies that contributed to the negative perceptions of international students (Domınguez et al., 2022).
Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) provides an essential insight into career interests and goals (e.g., intentions, behaviors) by focusing on the intersection of multiple personal and environmental factors (Lent et al., 1994). SCCT is arguably one of the well-established theories that explain various populations’ career experiences and choices, such as student athletes or first-generation students (e.g., Chan, 2020; Santos, 2018); however, there is very limited research on international students who study and live abroad to pursue degrees in the host country. Scholars have called for more research that focuses on the diverse contextual factors that shape the unique career development of race/ethnic minority groups, including international students (Dickinson et al., 2017; Lent & Brown, 2017).
International students have unique career-related needs than those domestic counterparts, as they have to navigate additional challenges, such as language barriers, visa issues, and limited scholarship or financial aid (Koo et al., 2021). Given the critical role of these contextual barriers and support in building the pursuit of individuals’ career choices (Lent et al., 2000), very few studies have empirically tested the relationship between these various personal and contextual factors and career self-efficacy or outcome expectations of international students (Franco et al., 2019). This study thus extends the application of SCCT to international students’ samples. To instill novel insights into SCCT and the career literature, I examined the interplay of personal (self-efficacy, cultural adjustment) and contextual (social support) factors and its impact on intention to remain abroad after graduation and pursue careers in the U.S.
A total of 323 participants enrolled in a large Southern public university in the U.S. completed both the Time 1 and Time 2 surveys. Four responses were removed from the final analysis, which violated the multivariate data assumption based on Mahalanobis distance. To test my hypotheses and research model, I carried out the multiple mediation analyses and ran bias-corrected bootstrapping with 10,000 iterations using PROCESS (Model 80; Hayes, 2017). As shown in Figure 1, results showed that: (a) there is a statistically positive association between social support and cultural adjustment, self-efficacy, and career success expectations, respectively, while no direct effect on intention to remain abroad; (b) social support has a full indirect effect on intention to stay in the U.S. via cultural adjustment (indirect effect= .081, 95% bias-corrected confidence interval (CI) [.028, .138]) and career success expectations (indirect effect= .032, 95% bias-corrected CI [.005, .067]); and (c) cultural adjustment and self-efficacy have no impact on career expectations.
Theoretically, this study extends the applicability of SCCT to international students by capturing their unique experiences and perceptions of career choices. Moving beyond the dominant focus of career development in White, male, and middle-class students (Lent & Brown, 2017), this study sheds light on how international students’ career choices and intentions are shaped within the host country. As expected, social support within host country plays a vital role in promoting cultural adjustment, self-efficacy, and career success expectations, in consistent with earlier findings. The most surprising result, however, was the non-significant path from self-efficacy to outcome expectations. The findings suggest that international students did not perceive a link between their confidence in self-efficacy and career success expectations in the host country. One plausible explanation is career-related decisions of international students as non-citizens may be derived largely from tangible factors (e.g., visa issues) than intangible resources, such as self-efficacy.
The current study also provides practical implications. Career counselors and HR professionals in academic institutions need to offer some social networking opportunities and career development programs that cater to the unique needs of international and minority groups. International students can promote cultural exchange and create a more diverse learning environment (Wang, 2006) as well as serve as highly skilled/educated human resources to the organizations. Given that intentions to remain abroad are dependent on cultural adjustment and career expectations, helping international students successfully adjust to culture in a host country and boost their career success expectations would make organizations retain highly skilled/educated global talents.