The Career-building effect of volunteering in higher education

Abstract

Nowadays the motives for volunteering are changing among higher education students, andbesides traditional altruistic motives, career-building motives also appear (the acquisitionof work experience and professional knowledge, professional development, networking,the presentation of voluntary work in the resume). In this paper, we use data from a surveyconducted in five Central and Eastern European countries (N=2,199) to examine through linearregression analysis the factors affecting the strength of career-building motives and to analysethrough a logistic regression model the determinants of whether or not volunteering is related to the field of study. Our hypotheses are formulated based on the literature. Our results showthat career-building motives are more pronounced among women and students who have aclose relationship with external friends outside the university, study outside Hungary, and studysomething other than engineering, computer science or science. Voluntary work is more likely tobe related to the field of study among teacher education students, students with an unfavourablefinancial situation, those who study in Romania, and those who have a close relationship withfaculty.