This study was aimed at assessing the extent to which resources and physical facilities for guidance counselors (GCs) can foster the effectiveness of the guidance and counseling services in Cameroon State Universities. The research was carried out in four State Universities in Cameroon notably University of Buea, University of Bamenda, University of Douala and University of Yaounde II using a sample of 577 students, 26 guidance counselors and 21 University administrators. The study employed a survey design considering triangulation whereby qualitative and quantitative approaches supported each other to strengthen the validity and reliability of the findings. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to sample four State Universities while participants were involved in the study conveniently. Two sets of questionnaire, one for students and another one for GCs were used while an interview guide helped to gather data from the administrators. Data were digitalized with the support of EpiData version 3.1, and were analyzed descriptively and inferentially using SPSS 21.0. As for the textual data (qualitative data), their abstraction was reduced following the process of thematic analysis. The findings revealed that guidance counselors and students were generally not satisfied with resources and physical facilities. Specifically, both guidance counselors (6.7%) and students (10.8%) were in fact to a very weak extent satisfied with human resources. This trend was almost the same with financial resources with proportions of 33.3% for guidance counselors and 11.1% for the students, and the situation was neither better with materials nor physical facilities with proportion of 18.2% for guidance counselors and 3.1% for the students respectively. From administrators’ perspective, though they acknowledged the limitation of personnel (33.3%), they mostly did not have any idea as far as human resources allocated to guidance and counseling is concerned (61.9%). This was the same with financial resources or budget allocated for guidance and counseling, as 28.6% indicated that there is no budgetary line for guidance and counseling services while 52.4% was simply ignorant of the financial situation of the guidance and counseling services. As for materials and physical resources, administrators mostly indicated that there were no counseling centers in their institution (61.9%). They also pointed out the lack of equipped offices, counseling rooms and halls (19.0%). It was recommended that adequate human resources, finances, physical facilities and equipment should be made available in order to foster the effectiveness of guidance and counseling services in State Universities in Cameroon.
Guidance counselor, resources, physical facilities, effectiveness, services
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