College Coursework and Holland’s Theory: Understanding Students’ Choices
Choosing majors and minors is one of the most important factors we consider in matching our students with colleges that will best fit them. As such, we thought it would be worth sharing some of the methods we use to demystify this aspect of college choice.
Social reforms at the beginning of the 20th century opened doors for employment to individuals of all backgrounds. As job seekers gained more choices in the careers they could pursue, the field of vocational psychology developed to track those choices and the factors that influenced them. Early theories surrounding career choice relied on matching an individual’s aptitudes to those required in a given occupation.
Perhaps no vocational theory has been more influential than John Holland’s Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments, which elaborated on previous theories about the reciprocal interactions between individuals and their environments. Part of the appeal of Holland’s theory is its simple and intuitive premise: work choices are an expression of one’s personality, and, therefore, it is likely that people who choose similar occupations have similar traits and preferences. Holland proposed that an individual primarily resembles one of six theoretical personality types, each with its own characteristics (summarized here).
While many assessments focus on determining an individual’s primary personality type, the six personality types are certainly not mutually exclusive; most people exhibit one or more secondary personality traits. With this in mind, Holland’s theory suggests specific relationships between personality types via the figure here, in which types that are closer together in the hexagonal arrangement are hypothesized to share more in common. For example, it is more likely that an individual whose primary personality type is Enterprising will demonstrate secondary personality types of Social or Conventional than Investigative.
Holland’s theory similarly categorizes occupations and their respective work environments as one of these six types based on the dominant personality types of individuals within a given occupation. Thus, Holland’s association between individual and environment emerges, based on the assumption that people choose circumstances and situations in which they can utilize preferable skills and work to solve agreeable problems. Ideally, individuals would search for work and employers would search for workers possessing similar competencies and traits, leading to career satisfaction for the individual and adequate completion of work for the employer. A similar argument can be made in the case of choosing areas of study in college. A student who is aware of his/her personality type, interests, and preferences for work is more likely to choose college courses that both satisfy the desire to pursue interests and transition to meaningful sources of employment.
As such, we believe that Holland’s theory is most applicable to a population of high school students who are researching colleges and careers: assessments based on the theory provide a snapshot of current, useful information about a student that can readily be compared with the majors and minors a school offers. Even undecided students can determine whether a particular school offers a combination of programs that are of potential interest based on the results of their assessments and then pursue those interests further. While other vocational theories (such as Super’s Developmental Theory) may contend that this ‘snapshot’ may not offer a comprehensive panorama of an individual’s career choices, high school students almost exclusively find themselves in the earliest stages of Super’s developmental model and, therefore, have limited (if any) career choices to make comparisons with at this point in their lives.
While we contend that Holland’s theory is most appropriate as an initial guiding framework for high school students looking to future careers, we also recognize its potential limitations. Despite being the most exhaustively researched career theory of the last sixty years, further investigation is needed to confirm that Holland’s six personality types are applicable across cultures and, if so, whether they occur in the same order of association suggested by Holland’s hexagonal model. Furthermore, Holland’s theory fails to consider sociocultural factors that may influence individuals to pursue employment roles that conflict with their primary personality type and an individual's propensity to develop new interests and discard old ones over time.
That’s where we come in. We know how difficult college choice and college admissions can be. We recognize that the results of an assessment based on Holland’s theory may not resonate with a student, and there are plenty of other options available to help determine students’ best postsecondary options and the factors that influence them. We’ll work with you every step of the way to make sure we’re asking the right questions and getting answers that offer useful insights. Contact us today to learn more about our college counseling services!
Adapted from Swanson, J.L., & Fouad, N.A. (2020). Career Theory & Practice: Learning Through Case Studies. Sage Publications, Inc.
