Career Success Center (CSC)
Project for Students and Alumni of
Faculty of Business Administration,
Chiang Mai University

Rationale and Initiative

Graduate quality crisis affecting development of Thailand by and large is summarized in light of inconsistence between the output (i.e. graduates) from the academic institutions and the expectation of the recruiters. Universities as the major source of workforce providers have been criticized in various aspects. Knowledge and skills obtained from higher education are mismatched with the requirements of employers.

Graduate’s attitude towards career and profession is far different from anticipation of corporate executives. The new-generation workers lack commitment and loyalty to the best interest of organizations. Their personal expectation and desire, life style and world view are conflicting with existing HRD practices or strategies of employers.

The crisis is too complicated to be resolved merely by developing better curricula, raising standards or improving effectiveness of teaching techniques. But it requires a thorough re-socialization. At present, the Thai educational and cultural structure pushes students to enter tertiary education not according to their professional passions or inspirations originated from self-contemplation and discovery but instead according to school achievements and scores of national exams.

Notably, most high-school graduates are unable to identify their goals, discuss what they want to accomplish in life, or what they want to do for themselves, family, society and nation. The immediate consequence of this personal goal deficit is that students also fail to ask themselves how to live their lives, what kind of persons they want to become, what education they need to be able to achieve their dreams. Education is no guarantee for a successful life, particularly when the learners do not even realize the purpose of their studies. Thus for many people success depends on windfall and coincidence, rather than the deliberate result of a profound desire. Certain youngsters somehow feel committed to particular careers. However, many of them lack appropriate knowledge, skill, and attitude to lead them to a well-rounded, successful life. This is a side effect from the fact that today formal curricula largely focus on teaching students to work to make a living but negligibly on inculcating them to work to make a life.

A large amount of them discover later in lives that they should have taken different paths but still do not know how to shift. Unfortunately, many are eaten up by life adversities and become highly-capable failures. For the reasons discussed above, the Faculty of Business Administration foresees the necessity of setting up Career Success Center to serve as a primary source of polishing our gemstones (i.e. alumni, current students and the prospective) to ensure that they have both career understanding and professional proficiency. This initiative is to be achieved through obtaining personal mastery, being deeply inspired, committing to passion, being equipped with the right attitude and conscience for growth, being internally driven for continuous self-development, and through not letting success be a factor in the hand of chance and luck.

Philosophy and Mission

Career Success Center is established as a life-long relationship site between the Faculty of Business Administration and its students as well as alumni. The Center aims to inculcate, develop and promote knowledge, skill attitude and conscience that ensure its clients to become successful and well-rounded persons. Career Success Center believes that students and alumni are not merely its service recipients and outside organizations are not only recruiters. It strongly believes that its accomplishment occurs when all activities are operated from the enthusiastic participation and effective relationship between current students, alumni, and external networks

Types of CSC Activities

  •  In planning the Activity Calendar of CSC, all activities will be classified in various dimensions: 
    • By Target Group, namely
      • Activities for current students varying by academic years and levels
      • Activities for alumni, fitting to their life cycle and career advancement 
    • By Objectives of Activities such as:
      • Activities for personal goal discovery and self-realization
      • Activities for career inspiration and identifying dream
      • Activities inculcating commitment to excellence and success
      • Job searching skill development
      • Activities incubating skill, attitude, and conscience necessary for growth
      • Activities for career shift
      • Activities for developing personal mastery
      • Activities for handling and coping with adversity
    • By Requirement
      • Mandatory activities in which students are required to participate
      • Pre-requisite activities which participants need to pass before heading to the subsequent activity
      • Optional activities in which students and alumni may opt to participate
    • By Nature of Activities
      • Workshop
      • Special lecture
      • Seminar
      • Discussion forum
      • Company presentation
      • Self-directed study
      • Lab
      • etc.