Abstract:
The demand for higher education in Sri Lanka is rapidly increasing. Yet Sri Lanka
fails to get the labour force of the graduates who pass out of universities involved
in the country’s development. Most of the job seekers’ desire is to get high paid
employments with less skills. Among all the graduates, graduates of Arts
faculties face much difficulties in the job market in finding a suitable
employment. Though many students enroll for Arts faculties, one of the main
problems face by them is not having a direct job after the graduation. Therefore,
in deciding the future career path, it is very much vital to focus on other factors.
The main purpose of this research is to identify the potentials of the
undergraduates that affects for their future careers. For the research, a sample
of 100 undergraduates was selected from the faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences using an equal proportion of stratified random sampling method. A
structured questionnaire was used in collecting primary data. In analyzing the
data, descriptive statistics and a factor analysis was performed to identify the
potential factors and the identified factors affect to the employability of the
undergraduates are personality, mentality, language proficiency and computer
literacy. In conforming to the analysis, 81% of the respondents are more inclined
towards the state sector and out of that, 41% of the respondents prefer to engage
in teaching career. 23%, 12% and 4% of the respondents are more likely to do a
job in administration sector, banking and consultation sector and mass media
sector respectively. As per the factor analysis, it was discovered that there are
four main factors which affects in determining future careers. It was examined
that the most influential factor is the personality factor as it takes the largest
value for “lamda” among other factors and it represents 37.2% of the total
sample proportion. The second factor is mentality. Language proficiency and
computer literacy takes third and fourth factors respectively. Therefore, it can
be concluded that undergraduates should focus on their studies as well as the
above potential factors if they are willing to be a demanded employee.
