UCLA does an annual survey of incoming American undergrads.
The CIRP Freshman Survey is part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) and is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. The 2007 freshman norms are based on the responses of 272,036 first-time, full-time students at 356 of the nation’s baccalaureate colleges and universities. The data have been statistically adjusted to reflect the responses of the 1.4 million first-time, full-time students entering four-year colleges and universities as freshmen in 2007.
The 2007 results came out recently and the info on helicopter parenting has me concerned. Either we’ve all been wrong about helicopter parents and their over-involvement in their kids’ education, or the young’uns in question like being helicoptered. Here’s what the survey found out about
Parental Involvement:
While college officials nationwide say they have seen an increase in parents who are heavily involved in the college experiences of their children, a strong majority of today’s college freshmen believe their parents are involved the “right amount,” according to UCLA’s annual survey of the nation’s entering undergraduates.
The report suggests freshmen show a dependency on parents when making college-related decisions.
“When parents intervene in their children’s college life and decision-making, students may not necessarily develop their own problem-solving skills, which may limit developmental gains in their learning experiences,” said John H. Pryor, a co-author of the report and director of CIRP.
A majority of freshmen considered their parents’ participation in their college careers to be the “right amount,” with 84 percent reporting the “right amount” of parental involvement in their decision to go to college, 80.5 percent in their decision to attend the college at which they enrolled and 77.5 percent in dealing with college officials.
Conversely, nearly one in four freshmen (24 percent) report that their parents displayed “too little” involvement in helping them select college courses, and 22.5 percent say their parents were not involved enough in helping choose college activities.
Along with parental involvement, the survey also covered:
“Habits of Mind” for Learning:
The report identifies a troubling pattern in students’ study habits for lifelong learning. While a large majority of freshmen report that they use the Internet on a daily basis to seek information, only a few within the classroom are cultivating the essential “habit of mind” of checking the accuracy and reliability of the information they receive.
“Students’ frequent use of the Internet shows a preference for information that is easily accessible, but that information is not necessarily reliable and accurate,” Hurtado said. “Learning how to evaluate knowledge claims is an essential part of a liberal education, and we expect that colleges will have to be more intentional about integrating information literacy in the education of college students today.”
Impact of Social Networking Sites:
While the popularity of social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace runs high — 86.3 percent of incoming freshmen report that during the last year of high school they spent at least some time on such sites each week — students still spend relatively more time in an average week studying, working and “live” socializing.
Time spent on social networking sites appears, however, to be related not to less “live” socializing but to more time spent in other social activities. Students who used social networking Web sites more often were also more likely to socialize with friends and attend parties. This did not seem to have any significant impact on the number of hours a week students spent studying.
Diversity-Related Issues:
Attitudes about diversity continue to change among incoming first-year students: 36.7 percent of students expressed the personal goal of helping to promote racial understanding, a 2.7 percentage-point increase from 2006 and the highest this figure has been since 1994. Not surprisingly, the figure escalates among students at black colleges and universities, where 64 percent see this as an essential or very important personal goal.
Interest in the global community is advancing as well. When this item was first placed on the questionnaire in 2002, following the attacks of Sept. 11, 43.2 percent of students reported that they had an interest in improving their understanding of other countries and cultures; in 2007 that proportion became a majority, at 52.3 percent.
Freshman support for same-sex marriages has expanded steadily, from 50.9 percent 1997 to 63.5 percent in 2007. The issue, however, reveals a wide gender gap: 55.3 percent of male freshmen report that same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status, compared with 70.3 percent of female students. Gender differences appear on other issues, as well: More than half of all males (53.7 percent) agree with the statement that undocumented immigrants should be denied access to public education, compared with 43.5 percent of all female students; 43.3 percent of males and 39.2 percent of females at black colleges agreed.
Reasons to Attend College:
Academic quality remained the top reason for choosing a college, cited by 63 percent of students — a 5.6 percentage-point jump from 2006 and the highest this figure has been in 35 years. And college affordability is now more than ever a priority for students, with the importance of being awarded financial assistance increasing 5.1 percentage points from 2006 to 39.4 percent in 2007, also the highest this figure has been in 35 years.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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