Self-Perceived and Self-Expressed Social and Personal Problems of Students: the Case of Cape Coast Polytechnic, Ghana - Implications for Guidance and Counselling

This paper examined the self-perceived and self-conceived social and personal problems of students with particular reference to the Cape Coast Polytechnic with a view to examining how these problems can be influenced by effective counseling. It identified the self-perceived social and personal problems of the Marketing students.  It then examined how effective counseling could influence the students’ academic performance and their perception of their problems. Finally it determined strategies for improving counselling to address students’ problems effectively. Both published and unpublished studies on students’ problems were viewed.  The researcher developed questionnaires for lecturers and students for data collection.  Frequencies and percentages were used to analyse data to answer the research questions.

The studies revealed that students were beset with several problems which could affect their academic performance, that majority of them desired the services of professional counsellors to address their problems, and  that counselling services provided for the Marketing students improved the students’ attitude towards their academic work, reduced the ranking of their concerns for studies and relations to people, and improved their examination results. Based on the above findings some useful recommendation and suggestions for further studies were made.  Prominent among them are: (1) A counselling centre must be provided manned by professionally-qualified Counsellors, (2) Lecturers must be motivated to participate fully in the counselling of students to help address their problems, and (3) Lecturers’ teaching loads must be reduced to offer them the opportunity to have time to counsel the students.