DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2019.v07i06.006

Pages: 404–414

Career guidance and counseling is one of the services for promoting employability skills, which are augmented through career guidance cells in the Universities/Colleges. Though the University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi has given the direction to start career guidance and counseling cell in the Colleges/Universities, but a very few Colleges/Universities are offering career guidance services to the student community. In some other Colleges/Universities, some teachers and senior students are extending the career guidance services informally to the students. But these services are not comprehensive as they have no expertise in the area of career guidance and counseling. The author has taken up a project under UGC Emeritus Fellowship entitled ‘A Comparative study on the best practices in Career Guidance and Counseling Programmes of Different Colleges/Universities in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala States’ with an objective to study the universities/colleges, which are providing career guidance and counseling services to the students in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala states and the best practices/strategies followed by the selected universities/colleges. The present paper entitled ‘Career Guidance and Counseling Services in Selected Universities/Colleges in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala States’ is a part of the above project work presenting some basic observations and preliminary results relating to the sample universities/colleges selected for study, type of career guidance and counseling programmes implemented by the selected Universities/Colleges in A.P and Kerala and their nature and features, the methods and approaches used by the career guidance counselors/trainers. Before presenting the observations/ results, we try to understand the need for career guidance and counseling, providers of career guidance and counseling, review of studies conducted in India and abroad, objectives and method of investigation.