AbstractThis paper reports new findings from a longitudinal, mixed-methods study of purpose in 1,041 students from 11 U.S. colleges and universities. Our paper focuses on the “beyond-the-self” (BTS) dimension of purpose development in college, the aspect of purpose that is most relevant for moral education. The study includes two waves of survey data and in-depth interviews with 54 survey respondents. In the survey’s open text questions, where students write about their goals and reasons for their goals’ importance, most respondents described aspirations toward lives of commitment beyond the self or meaning/fulfillment as opposed to credentialing or narrowly defined financial ROI. These aspirations were stable over time for 61% of respondents. This suggests that most students don’t become more narrowly pragmatic during college, losing what some might see as their youthful idealism. But neither do they show significant growth toward purposeful commitments during college. Despite extensive scholarship on links between meaning/fulfillment and purposeful commitment, only 24% of respondents included both in their T1 open texts, and this number fell to 20% at T2. On a more hopeful note, almost 2/3 of interviewees spontaneously described important moral/civic learning experiences, focusing on one or more of three themes: ethics/virtue; equity/social justice; and topics of civic concern such as environmental protection or healthcare. Most interviews independently coded as purposeful referred to ethics/virtue learning. The session will conclude with a discussion of implications for college-level moral education. |
