Development of a Model to Explain Motivation of Students to Undertake Skill based Courses

Abstract

Skill development has been identified as the major factor to improve employability across the world. Despite this understanding selling skill courses to the future employees has been an uphill task primarily because of the lack of motivation the students have shown in this respect. Consequently, the major challenges to make skill development acceptable for the students have invited attention of many researchers. Low motivation for skill courses have also been reported from the Himalayan state of Sikkim in India. This study has been undertaken primarily to understand the variables that influence the demotivation of stake-holders for the skill-based courses. From an exploratory study the major factors identified included lack of government-jobs through skilling, resistance to move out of Sikkim, lack of industry base in the state, stigma of school-drop out students associated with skill courses, poor social standing of jobs based on skilling and lack of awareness of skill-based job opportunities. Data has been collected from various stake holders including students, parents, teachers, policy-makers and industry managers. The sample size is 670 and multiple sampling methods has been used to decide the respondents. The analysis of the data is based on correlation followed by regression. Regression model has been developed for the entire sample as well as separately for the stake-holders. The results provide interesting insight of the beliefs held in this respect in general as well as by distinct stake-holder groups. It is found that models for differing stake-holder groups differ considerably in terms of the relative influence of the selected factors on the overall motivation of students for undertaking skill-based courses. The conclusion of the study provides valuable insight for the policy-makers to make skill courses more acceptable to the stake-holders.