I have a nearly addictive habit of randomly clicking on "Recently Updated Weblogs" on Typepad to be exposed to new voices. Anyway, surfing through this blog I came across this post on this study.
....American Freshman Survey, an annual study released today by UCLA. The survey, which has been conducted for 38 years, is the longest-running assessment of student attitudes and plans......interest in being "very well off financially" was at 73.8%, the highest level in 13 years.
Fewer than 40% of current college freshmen believe it is important to develop a meaningful philosophy. The absence of introspection is a far cry from the peak year of 1967, when 86% of freshmen said it was important to find a meaningful life philosophy.
Alarming news? Not so sure, but if you surveyed me as a freshman I'd have the same response. I was seeking freedom after feeling straitjacketed in a hyper-protective environment growing up. To an 18-year-old, money appears be the ticket to independence and freedom. But independence and freedom are more of a mindset than a bank account...of course, it has taken eons for me to arrive at that epiphany. And even longer to begin to live it.
There were unconscious factors in play that got me to switch from a journalism to computer engineering track in college. I watched my senior friends at the college paper struggle to find any positions upon graduation. Sure I had a lot of (unexpected) fun in my first computer programming class (originally a strategy to avoid taking any math electives). But a visit back to my high school student government advisor who encouraged me to go for the sciences and engineering versus English lit, journalism and philosophy clinched it. Oh, those other topics, I could easily learn them later. Ultimately, I never wanted to have to live at home again because I was a destitute, unemployed reporter or for that matter, watching the example of my stay-at-home mom, be dependent on anyone else for my sustenance.
Little did I understand sustenance.
"In Africa, they say there are two hungers, the lesser hunger and the greater hunger. The lesser hunger is for the things that sustain life, the goods and services, and the money to pay for them, which we all need. The greater hunger is for an answer to the question "why?", for some understanding of what that life is for." - Charles Handy, The Hungry Spirit
I wouldn't worry too much about what freshmans' priorities are today. Nothing is static. Like the koru, the Maori symbol for the young fern shoot, adults unfold and unspiral and continue growing.
Hi Evelyn, like you I'm not going to get too worried about this. Not least because these snanpshot polls offer only the crudest insight into people's values.
For instance, they assume that we really have insights into what our motivations are and frankly I don't think I had much insight myself at that age!
And I'm not sure that the phrase "meaningful philosophy" is very appealing... quite an abstraction I'd say.
Posted by: Johnnie Moore | Jun 03, 2004 at 04:48 PM