DOES MONEY INFLUENCE MY CAREER CHOICE? PERCEPTION OF STUDENTS OF UNDERGRADUATE COURSES OF A PUBLIC HEI

This research aimed to identify the influence of the meaning of money in the choice of the undergraduate course for students attending a public HEI in the Southwest region of Parana. It is classified as a survey, descriptive and with a quantitative approach. A total of 390 questionnaires were applied based on the ESD-Scaling of Meaning of Money by Moreira and Tamayo (1999), in which 367 validated questionnaires remained. The data analysis method used was Factor Analysis and Multinominal Logistic Regression. The components of ESD are identified: power, detachment, suffering, inequality and culture. For students in the Accounting course, the meaning of money is explained by the components of conflict, culture, detachment, inequality, power, progress, and suffering, for the Administration, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering courses, the power component, as for the Agronomy course, the components of power and progress, in the Civil Engineering course, the attributions of conflict and power. In the Mechanical Engineering course only for the inequality component. Academics in the Literature course with attributions of the components of culture, detachment and suffering. For those in Mathematics, detachment and ending with a Chemistry course, the components of power and suffering. Thus, identifying the existence of different perceptions about the meaning of money among the analyzed courses.