What are your reasons for going to college?
a) To get a better job, b) To gain a general education, c) To be a more cultured person, d) To make more money, or e) To learn about things that interest me.
This question, which appeared on the Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s annual Freshman Survey, was met with the same answers year after year: all of the above.
According to the research program, more than 400,000 incoming freshmen from across the nation participate in the Freshman Survey.
Students attend college for a variety of reasons, all equally important, said Linda DeAngelo, assistant director for research at the Higher Education Research Institute, which administers the annual survey through Cooperative Institutional Research Program.
“Students come for everything,” DeAngelo said. “There is a large percent of students saying that all of the reasons are very important. They want a better job, they want to learn about things that interest them, they want a good college experience.”
According to the report, the most popular answers among students surveyed in 1976 were to learn about what interested them and to get a better job.
The most recent survey has not shown a significant difference.
In 2009, 82.7 percent of students hoped to learn about things that interested them, while 89.3 percent hoped to get a better job.
“That is not a big change at all,” DeAngelo said. “Students wanted it all then, and now they want it all even more. Now, a college education is considered a necessity in a different way than in the ’70s. Then, it was the beginning of a diverse student body; now, it’s even more diverse. The biggest change has been the types of students going to college.”
The surge in students of various racial and financial backgrounds can be explained by the steady increase of students going to college each year, sociology Professor Robert Mare said.
“The motivation to have a particular style of life ““ friends, dating, experiences, what you learn and talk about ““ bring people to college,” Mare said. “It’s like a snowball. As we get more people going to college, there is more pressure for other types of people to go.”
Rising numbers can also be attributed to the nature of the national job market, said Judith Smith, vice provost of undergraduate education.
“Going to college is necessary for students’ success later in life in the sense that they can earn more,” Smith said. “Education is critical to their careers, because the kinds of jobs that students are looking for are career-based, and they’ll need a college degree to get it.”
As the demand for college degrees continues to rise, students of various backgrounds are seeking all possible ways to gain entry to universities, Mare said.
“It is important to look at junior colleges,” Mare said. “Junior college is a popular stepping-stone for people of poorer backgrounds.”