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The place of university in the culture of young people
Conference paper   Open access

The place of university in the culture of young people

Madeleine Laming
10th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference (Brisbane, QLD, 04/07/2007–06/07/2007)
2007
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Abstract

This study examined differences in Australian secondary school students’ attitudes to higher education. It investigated links between their view s their family backgrounds. To facilitate this, the young people were divided into two groups: Traditional Students, who come from well-educated families and Newcomers who come from less well-educated families. This study reveals that there were significant differences in young people’s attitudes to enrolling at university that were closely linked to their family backgrounds: Inheritors were more supportive of the liberal perspective, while the Newcomers were generally more utilitarian in their approach. The study also found that while there has been a general shift in values towards the utilitarian perspective, there were a substantial number of Newcomers who had absorbed the liberal idea of university education as a cultural experience. The implication of this finding is universities need to tailor their transition programs to accommodate these differences.

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