Background

Experts often treat the mission of higher education as limited to credentialing graduates for financial success and producing a skilled labor force. Research on college students suggests that this framing misses students’ most meaningful aspirations.

Aims

Our research sought to understand how college students articulate what they are after, why it is important to them, and how they are pursuing those goals, as well as how these evolve across two years in college.

Method

This study surveyed 1,042 students in 11 diverse U.S. colleges and universities at two time points, 2019 and 2021. We coded and analyzed the responses to open-text survey questions that asked respondents (at both time points) to describe: (1) their most important goals, (2) the reasons those goals are important to them, and (3) what they are doing to pursue those goals.

Results

Analyses of T1 data revealed that most respondents aspire to (1) helping others or contributing to society; (2) many aspects of wellbeing, including personal growth, meaning, and autonomy; and/or (3) expertise in and desire to contribute to an occupational or creative field. More than half exhibited a beyond-the-self orientation (BTS). Respondents reported at T1 that they are actively pursuing their aspirations, mostly through academic and other programs provided by their colleges and universities, and through personal practices in daily life. Students’ with BTS orientation also rated highly many self-related personal goals. Analyses comparing codes at Times 1 and 2 are underway and will be reported at the conference.

Conclusion

Our study indicates that college students’ aspirations and actions contrast sharply with a financial cost-benefit analysis of higher education’s value. Most students in our sample reported that they are actively seeking deep well-being, meaning, and purpose. The study also shows that beyond-the-self aspirations are consistent with the pursuit of self-related personal goals. Finally, the session will report new findings on continuity and change in students’ aims and actions across two years of college.