Educational and occupational aspirations of rural youth
Conference “Socioeconomic diversity of rural areas and rural development prospects” - read
Nowadays there is virtually no need to explain to anyone how important educational status is as far as natural persons’ careers and development of whole societies are concerned.
What is the condition of Polish rural youth against this background?
What are their educational aspirations? How do they affect their careers?
What are their choices conditioned by? How are these choices situated at the background of the ones being made by urban youth?
Answers to these questions come from the research which has been conducted over the past few years by the Polish Academy of Sciences Institute for Rural and Agricultural Development (IRWiR PAN).
The research indicates that the educational gap between rural and urban population has been steadily decreasing over the several years which mainly concerns younger generations. Despite substantial changes within this scope, educational gap is still significant. In 2007, the percentage of fifteen-year-olds (and older) population with a higher education equalled 7,2% in the countryside while in the cities it amounted to 19,3%. From a formal point of view, educational gap is decreasing, however, a substantial differentiation of quality of acquired education still remains. It mainly results from the choices of educational paths made by rural youth, mostly less prestigious than the ones made by urban youth. It affects the future less attractive career path which in turn results in receiving relatively lower salary.
Primary factor which decides about choosing a particular educational path
by rural youth is their parents’ educational status. It is less advantageous
in relation to urban youth because the parents of rural teenagers twice as often have below-secondary education and almost three times rarer than urban teenagers’ parents, higher education. Educational status influences rural youth’s though and intellectual horizons, the way of perceiving the reality and
it also determines families’ economic status to a large extent. From this point
of view urban youth is more privileged which reflects in their later educational status as well.
The second important factor diversifying rural youth’s career paths is still the place of residence in spite of the increase in education accessibility we have experienced over the last several years. Rural origin still affects the choice
of “worse” educational paths and consequently results in limited chances
of achieving a high social status in the future.
Rural youth twice as often as their urban counterpart choose vocational secondary schools and twice as rarely express their interest in studying
at general secondary schools. If we look at the willingness to continue studying at university, then the distance to rural youth is rather short. 85% of rural youth at the age of 19 declares the willingness to continue studying whereas about 91% of urban youth of the same age wishes to do the same. From among them 65% of rural youth wants to study at universities and 17% is considering acquiring “higher education plus” (second faculty, postgraduate or PhD studies). 77,5% and 23% of urban youth formulate analogous plans respectively. Research results referring to occupational aspirations of rural youth indicate less ambitious plans when compared to urban youth. It is particularly visible when it comes to choosing attractive jobs and expressing willingness to apply for positions which require high qualifications, high level of responsibility and risk. Such plans are formulated by about 30% of rural youth and about 43%
of urban youth respectively.
Rural youth considerably more often reckon that it is perfectly enough for them to achieve the middle step of their career, especially if it does not involve excessive professional and individualistic requirements.
This article contains the results of the research conducted at Polish Academy of Sciences Institute for Rural and Agricultural Development (IRWiR PAN) under the guidance of prof Krystyna Szafraniec – head of the Centre for Sociology of Youth and Education.
