Enduring aspirations and moral learning: A longitudinal study of U.S. College students

ABSTRACT

The present study tracked stability and change in college students’ aspirations, as expressed in survey open text entries at two time points three years apart. Interviews with a subset of respondents provided descriptive accounts of their experiences of moral/civic learning connected with their college experiences. Participants (n=640) were drawn from 11 U.S. colleges and universities. Surveys were conducted in winter 2018-2019 and fall 2021. Fifty-four survey respondents participated in hour-long interviews in spring 2021. Most survey respondents’ aspirations were stable over 3 years, with most focusing on contribution beyond-the-self, fulfillment and preparation for vocations. Only a small percentage focused on financial goals or credentialing. Aspirations to contribute beyond-the-self were expressed even more frequently in interviews. When asked to describe what they had learned in courses and extracurricular activities and in their relationships with peers and adults, interviewees described learning relating to ethics and virtue, social justice and civic issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Purpose
• fulfillment
• college students
• goals

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Lillian Wolfe for her excellent help with interview coding and to Lisa Staton for her valuable contributions to many aspects of the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For the sake of simplicity, this study used a dichotomous designation for purpose, as coded from interview material. In taking this approach, we do not mean to imply that the purpose construct is best understood as dichotomous, treating purpose as fully present or entirely absent. The larger study of purpose development in college, of which this study is a part, includes a survey measure of purpose as a continuous variable and also analyses that identify four developmentally distinct purpose statuses described by Malin (2022) as dabbling, dreaming, drifting, and full purpose. In our current analyses, which focus primarily on college students’ goals and experiences of moral/civic learning, the four purpose statuses are reduced to two categories, designating the presence or absence of full purpose. Findings using the continuous measure and the 4-category purpose status designations are reported elsewhere (Malin, 2022; Malin, et al., under review).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Mellon Foundation [grant number 31700630].

Notes on contributors

Anne Colby

Anne Colby is Adjunct Professor of Education at Stanford University. Previously, she was director of the Murray Research Center at Harvard University and Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Colby is the author of nine books, including The Power of Ideals; Educating Citizens; and Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education, which won AAC&U’s Frederick Hess Award. She also received the Association for Moral Education’s Kuhmerker Award and was named a 2017 Influencer on Aging for research on purpose in older adults. She holds a BA from McGill University and a PhD from Columbia University.

Nhat Quang Le

Nhat Quang Le is a research assistant at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He earned a BS in psychology and social action from Palo Alto University and an MA in experimental psychology from San Jose State University.

Heather Malin

Heather Malin is director of research at the Stanford University Center on Adolescence. Her work focuses on how young people develop purpose and on the application of this research to educational practice. She is the author of Teaching for Purpose: Preparing Students for Lives of Meaning and numerous articles on youth purpose. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, a masters degree and teaching credential from Columbia University Teacher’s College, and a PhD in education from Stanford University.