What do University Students Expect from the Future?

Abstract

The article describes the results of sociological research “Vision of the future in the ideas of University students”, which was carried out in National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University within implementation of international project “Interdisciplinary Research of the Future”. It was an exploring-type of research, based on qualitative methods. Semantic analysis has been carried out for interpretation of the obtained data. The results allowed defining the main concepts, via which University students create the vision of their personal future, shape its hierarchy and identify emotional and rational components of these concepts. Besides, the developed methodology of the research allows comparing the vision of the future, which is created from unconscious paradigms and the one, which exists at the level of consciousness and is more subjected to the pressure of the social stereotypes. Also the difference in vision of the future was traced depending on the gender of the respondents. We assume that the obtained results will facilitate the promotion of academic research related to the content of academic programs of higher professional education.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s7p206