Career adaptability and students’ engagement in higher education

Career adaptability and engagement are important processes in higher education, with repercussions on individuals’ academic and professional paths. However, research to deepen knowledge about the relationship between these processes is still needed. This study aims to explore the relationship between career adaptability and academic engagement in a sample of higher education students. As specific goals, this study intends to: characterize career adaptability and academic engagement in a sample of higher education students; analyse relationships between dimensions of career adaptability and dimensions of academic engagement. The sample of this quantitative study included 201 participants, 156 women (77.6%) and 45 men (22.4%), aged between 18 and 55 years (M = 21.23), mostly of Portuguese nationality (98.5%). Besides a sociodemographic questionnaire, participants completed the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS) and the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI). Positive and statistically significant correlations between career adaptability and academic engagement dimensions were found, except between emotional engagement and career concern, which were not significant. Future studies might recruit more representative samples of higher education students and employ a longitudinal design to examine variations in career adaptability, academic engagement, and their inter-relations over time.