The changing American college student: implications for educational policy and practice

Abstract

New students entering higher education institutions in the United States have undergone dramatic changes during the past two decades. This paper summarizes some of the major trends observed in these surveys and discusses possible implications of the findings for educational policy and practice.

Each fall since 1966 the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles has been conducting a national survey of new college freshmen. A typical survey involves 250,000 students and a nationally representative sample of 550 higher education institutions of all types. Between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s American college students became much more focussed on material goals and less concerned with altruism and social problems. These value changes were accompanied by dramatically increased student interest in business careers and a sharp decline of interest in school teaching, social work, nursing, the clergy, and other service careers. These changes are perhaps best illustrated in the contrasting trends in two values: ‘being very well off financially,’ which doubled in popularity during the period of survey and ‘developing a meaningful philosophy of life’ which was the top student value in the early 1970s but was endorsed by fewer than half as many students by the late 1980s.

During just the past two or three years most of these trends seem to have ended or, in certain cases, shown signs of reversing direction. At the same time, there is growing evidence that students are increasingly oriented toward social activism. Protecting the environment appears to be the single greatest concern among American college students at the turn of the decade.