Professional Vocational and Career Counsellors prepare young people for integration into the world of work.
Counsellors have the duty of guiding these young minds as they struggle to discover their talents, abilities,
disabilities, interests, competence and job requirements. To achieve these objectives, counselors work in
cooperation with relevant teams in Education, Human Resources and of course in Government at different levels.
The discipline known as “Guidance and Counselling” has been introduced in Nigerian Universities since the
1980s. As my research has revealed however, these Universities (Ibadan, Lagos and Ife) have not undertaken any
major revision of their programmes since the subject was first introduced as a major area of study. Rather, their
syllabuses are dominated with theories that were first developed in the 1980s., with little or nothing done to rework
the syllabus so as to align them with current demands in vocational counselling.
In this paper, I present a comparative analysis of curriculums of three Nigeria Universities and two Universities
in Germany, following which I proffer broad suggestions on how to improve on the programmes of study in
Nigeria Universities. This, in such a way that vocational and career counseling will become truly
professionalized, with adequate opportunities provided for specialists to discharge their responsibilities fully and
effectively
