80 percent of students enrolled in the 2019 school year picked “academics” as the most important thing in their freshman year of college. (image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Dec. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — Students who started their undergraduate degree in 1999 consist mainly of those born in the 1980s. while undergrads who started university in 2019 were born in 2000s.
How different are the views of college life between these two generations?
Daehak Naeil, a weekly magazine for college students, surveyed 150 students each from the 1999, 2009 and 2019 classes.
As a result, 80 percent of students enrolled in the 2019 school year picked “academics” as the most important thing in their freshman year of college.
The results contrasted with the fact that students in 1999 thought that “human relationships with peers and seniors” were the priority, which accounted for 66.7 percent.
The 2019 class mainly considers “Lectures that give good grades,” accounting for 40 percent and “Lectures that have good evaluations,” accounting for 39.3 percent, when choosing classes.
Meanwhile, in the 1999 class response showed a marked difference from the fact that “Lectures with friends,” which accounted for 40.7 percent, ranked higher in importance than “Lectures with good grades,” which accounted for 28.7 percent.
Twenty years have also made a huge difference in the perception of human relationships in college.
When asked whether they would greet professors or seniors, 95.3 percent of the 1999 class and 91.3 percent of 2009 class responded yes, while only 85.3 percent of the 2019 class said yes.
The so-called “Eating alone” ratio, where students eat alone, is also higher now than in the past. While 6.7 percent of students in class of 1999 ate alone, the ratio increased to 11.3 percent in the class of 2019.
Kim Young-ki, a senior researcher who led the survey, said that the results were “a combination of social demands that require students to pour all of their efforts into studying and preparing for getting a job from the beginning of college, and the ‘being alone’ culture spread in line with fatigue over unnecessary human relationships.”
Some research shows that the possibility of “success based on effort” is viewed as more skeptical by the generation who recently entered college.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training, only 29.6 percent of respondents who were born in 1999 (mainly in the class of 2018) answered positively when asked if they thought anyone could succeed if they tried hard.
Some 51.2 percent said the most important factor in succeeding in society was “self-effort,” down sharply from 71.5 percent, according to a survey conducted in 2006.
“These days, college students are more accustomed to individualism than in the past and are more accustomed to individual success and individual life than to group activities,” said Koo Jeong-woo, a sociology professor at Sungkyunkwan University.
D. M. Park (dmpark@koreabizwire.com)
