The return of the fifties: Trends in college students' values between 1952 and 1984

Abstract

to measure value trends. In most value domains the trends are U-shaped, showing that the trends from the fifties to the sixties and seventies have reversed, and attitudes in 1984 were either similar to the fifties or moving in that direction. The domains include traditional religion, career choice, faith in government and the military, advocacy of social constraints on deviant social groups, attitudes about free enterprise, government and economics, sexual morality, marijuana use, and personal moral obligations. Two attitude areas do not show a return of the fifties: (1) other-direction was high in 1952, then dropped to the sixties and did not rise; (2) the level of politicization rose greatly from 1952 to the sixties, then dropped again only-slightly." College student value trends have been researched for some decades, and the results have been valuable to both educators and sociologists. Sociologists gain knowledge about social change; Yankelovich (1974) argues that college students are a kind of forerunner group for innovation and that the basic pattern of cultural change in America is diffusion from college students and recent graduates to the rest of the population. Researchers agree on the main outlines of value trends among students. The 1930s were a time of social, political, and religious liberalism.

How conservative are greenies? Environmental attitudes, conservatism, and traditional morality among University students

“…respondents who scored high on items to do with religiosity and traditional morality were more likely to be conservative rather than radical, ethnocentric, support a free-enterprise ideology, and be anti-republican rather than pro-republican (Table 1). Similar links between political and economic attitudes, and religion and moral values have been repeatedly demonstrated in the literature (Hanson, 1976; Hasleton, 1975; Hoge et al, 1984).…”

“…However, most of these liberal trends observed in the 1970s appear to have slowed, and even reversed in the 19809 (Easterlin & Crimmins, 1991; G d w i n & Roscoe, 1988; Rubinson & de-Rubertis, 1991;Smith, 1990;Specs, 1987). By the mid-dOs, attitudes were either similar to those of the 1950s or moving in that direction (Hastings & Hoge, 1986;Hoge et al, 1984).…”

“…We must be careful, however, in extrapolating from these results to the population at large. Students are in many ways not representative of the adult population, and have been found in the past to occupy more extreme and radical p i t i o n s on many issues (Hoge et al, 1984;McFalIs et al, 1985). The Gndings are consistent with, but do not conclusively prove, the assumption that environmentalism may function as an acceptable focus of general anti-establishment attitudes and values in times of rising conservatism and fundamentalism in the population at large.…”

Religion and Higher Education: Current Knowledge and Directions for Future Research

“…Finally, there is little evidence to support the claim, widespread in the popular media (e.g., Finder 2007; Swidey 2003; Taylor 2006), that students today are experiencing a surge in religious fervor. A few historical studies of collegiate religion exist (e.g., Goldsen et al 1960; Hoge 1974; Caplovitz and Sherrow 1977; Hoge, Hoge, and Wittenberg 1987), but they have methodological limitations that make them poor comparisons with today's large‐scale surveys of multiple universities. They also cannot provide a convincing answer to the question of whether students today are more interested and invested in religion than students 50 years ago, or whether today's colleges simply admit more students from groups that tend to be more outwardly religious, such as blacks, women, Catholics, and evangelicals (Schmalzbauer 2003; Sherkat 2007).…”

Student types as reflection of class habitus: An application of Bourdieu’s scholastic fallacy

“…The story of 'declining standards' in the 1960s is thus a story that fits in neatly with both factions, perhaps explaining its pull. For example, studies by Levine (1980) and Hoge et al (1987) described a rising tide of student apathy, careerism, and 'me-ism' in the later 1970s and 1980s, with a notable absence of a discussion of changing economic pressures on students, an absence that is all the more troubling when we realize this was also the era of deindustrialization, rising inequality, and the advent of the dismantling of the welfare state.…”