Telangana: Girls want career in agri, boys in police, says survey

Hyderabad: Girls studying in the state’s model schools want a career in agriculture and boys see themselves in the police. Their preferences were indicated in  a “My Choice My Future” survey conducted across 194 schools in 27 districts jointly by the state government and BodhBridge, a company incubated by IIT-Madras.

The survey covered 18,000 students and intends to help guide teachers in understand their students' abilities and, accordingly, provide career guidance to them.

The survey found that girls picked agriculture and food (20 per cent); medicine and healthcare (17 per cent); police (12 per cent) engineering and technology (8 per cent) and government and public administration (7 per cent) as their top five career interests.

Boys preferred Police (27 per cent), agriculture and food (15 per cent); engineering and technology (11 per cent); sports (9 per cent) and defence (7 per cent) as their top career interests.

When it came to career-oriented traits, close to 48 per cent were ‘communicative and expressive’, followed by ‘compassion/generosity’, ‘creativity’ and ‘extraversion’.

Data showed that model school students were more suited to careers in human services, entertainment, hospitality and tourism, education, law, art, marketing, journalism, sales, paramedical, finance and allied fields. Only 18 per cent of them are suited for engineering and technology and 11 per cent inclined towards entrepreneurship. Interestingly, over half of them were found to have ‘low suitability’ to careers in defence.

The survey also has data corresponding to each district. For instance, in Adilabad, boys expressed interest in environmental science, marketing, and paramedical services, whereas girls preferred journalism, sales, art and design.

In Karimnagar, boys showed interest in marketing, defence and architecture, while girls chose entrepreneurship, paramedical services and
sales.