This research examines the need for career-development programs to help athletes of high school and college age to develop their full potential as individuals outside the venue of sports. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which career-development programs have become an important issue and then to discuss how aspects of career development can be incorporated into the educational experience of young athletes and have relevance to the course of their entire lives.
A hard truth of the world of business that emerged in the late 20th century that the days of the 25-year gold watch are days of yore. This is the case even though the decade of the 1990s brought unprecedented prosperity of long duration to the industrial democracies, especially the USA. But in the midst of nearly full employment is concealed a complex of facts about the content of the full-employment structure. That is that full employment does not necessarily mean continuous employment at one company or other organization for individuals or groups over the entire course of their working lives. It is not uncommon to hear of people making major career changes two or three times during their working lives. Everything from company politics to a big merger with another company might come into play, but the reasons behind job transitions are not relevant to this research; only the fact that they are either necessary or desirable is.
Just as there is a distinction between full and continuous employment, so there are distinctions between current and continuous employability from organization to organization and between static and upwardly mobile employability within an organization. Connected to this are differences between the ability to change careers or and being forced to do so, irrespective of whether employees lose a job through no fault of their own. All of these factors have contributed to the growth in the field of career development, which en...