Comment by scarface_74
19 days ago
Do you think people coming out of the military - many with no skills that they thought could help them get a job after they left - went to college to be better citizens of the world and not to get a job?
If you listen to military recruiters now, they emphasize the ability to be able to get a job after you leave through training.
Also the statistics show that lower income people statistically go into the military.
When you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I can guarantee you that most people’s first priority is to support their addictions to food and shelter and are most concerned with making money to do so. It’s only the privileged who have parents who can support them while they are getting launched who can afford to get degrees in areas like Ancient Chinese Art History or more realistically journalism and work for low pay in high cost of living areas.
>went to college to be better citizens of the world and not to get a job?
It depends on the era. The data says they likely did decades ago, and less likely to share that same view now. Around the 1980s the proportions switched: prior, the majority of freshman had a goal of “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” compared to “being very well-off financially”. After the 1980s, that proportion inverted to the majority focused on material success.
Because the 1940s onward had a relatively high proportion of students from lower and middle class backgrounds, I don’t think the social class argument has as much explanatory power as you imply. In other words, the differences is that our cultural attitudes about college have likely changed due to other factors.
Edit: edited to soften tone and give more information. The data comes from UCLAs Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) surveys of incoming freshman. https://heri.ucla.edu/cirp-freshman-survey/
After your link, it still doesn’t show supporting data
You can register to get it through the "Access Data" tab. If you don't want to do that Google "HERI freshman survey". If that's still too much work, click on "Images" to see slides people have put together to summarize the data. You can also search for "The American Freshman: 40 year trends" to get summary reports.
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