PROPOSING CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE DETERMINANTS OF COLLEGE MAJOR CHOICE IN ARTS AND DESIGN

Abstract

The creative industry has been identified as having the potential of becoming one of the dominant pillars of Indonesia’s economy. The supply of human resources to such an industry can be derived from arts and design education, which currently receives little attention from the Indonesian Government. That has encouraged foreign-based Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to set up establishments in Indonesia. The problem of this research has focused on the issue of a design school which has been struggling to compete despite many superiorities and privileges. An intensive literature review has been done, as a suitable technique, to extant frameworks which can actually be combined to deal with the complexity of this multifaceted process of college major choice. Hence, this research aims to propose a new multi-theoretical framework combining three prominent career development theories, which is called HOROSCOPE, the abbreviation of Holland's RIASEC Personalities in Social Cognitive and Planned Behaviour Theories. It is expected that better understanding of the theoretical aspects would eventually lead to better practices by the management of HEIs delivering arts and design programmes in setting up any future strategies which will ultimately derive more profitable and sustainable business of education. This research revealed that it is clearly desirable for HEIs offering majors in arts and design in Indonesia to improve their understanding on college major choice, which will have further policy implications in the areas such as tuition fees, financial aids, recruitment strategies, and physical developments. The key recommendations have been suggested to conduct an empirical study to validate this conceptual framework in Indonesia.