College Students Feel More Stress, Survey Finds

College students are feeling increasing stress and anxiety about getting into prestigious graduate schools and landing big-money jobs, according to a national survey of freshmen.

Contributing to the stress, the survey suggested, may be the increasing difficulty of financing a college education. As federal financial aid continues to drop, more of the burden of paying for college is falling on the students and their families, according to the annual study sponsored by the American Council on Education and UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute.

The study, released today, found that 10.5% of freshmen last fall reported feeling depressed frequently and that 21.5% feel overwhelmed by all they have to do. Both percentages were the highest ever recorded in the 23 years that the survey has been conducted and several points higher than just the year before.

“Extreme competition breeds stress,” explained the survey’s director, Alexander W. Astin, a professor of higher education at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. Some students believe that they have to be superstars in school and in their careers if they are even going to match their parents’ standard of living, he said.

The survey found that a record percentage of freshmen--72.6%--indicated that making more money was a “very important” factor in their decision to attend college; that has grown steadily since the 49.9% recorded in 1971. Meanwhile, 60.1% said they are enrolled in college “to gain a general education.” That is a low point in a decline from 70.9% in 1977.

Kenneth C. Green, the survey’s associate director, said such trends are linked to students’ uncertainties about the future, bred during the inflation and the recessions that occurred in their childhoods. “It’s not just greed,” he explained. “It’s an understanding that in order to get the middle-class basket of goodies, like a house, you may now have to be well off.”

Careful Planners

The current college generation can be characterized as “children of the upheaval,” Green said, adding: “I think they are not unlike their grandparents who lived through the Great Depression.” The experience has caused young people to become early and careful planners of their lives, in sharp contrast to many students of the 1960s and ‘70s.

A record high percentage of freshmen in 1988 said they wanted to get doctoral degrees--11.7%, up from 10.4% in 1987, 7.9% in 1980 and 9.7% in 1970, according to the survey. Interest in law degrees also was at its highest, 5.0%, compared to 4.2% in 1987 and 3.5% in 1970. And 5.7% of freshmen said they want medical, dental or veterinary careers, up from 5.3% the year before, although still below the peak of 7.5% in 1974 when those careers were seen as less problem-laden.

“The rise in degree aspirations may suggest that a growing proportion of students feel that the bachelor’s degree will not be an adequate credential in the job market of the next decade and the next century,” said the study, which is based on responses of 222,296 students at 402 of the nation’s two- and four-year colleges and universities.

Business Careers

The percentage of freshmen interested in business careers dipped slightly, to 23.6% from 24.6% the previous year, probably as a result of the negative publicity about last year’s stock market crash and the scandals on Wall Street. However, the 1988 level was still far above the 19.7% recorded in 1980 and the 10.5% in 1972.

Concerns about steady and very good income are being reinforced by the high costs of college and a drop in government aid, the study suggested. During the Reagan Administration, eligibility for aid was tightened and scholarship funding declined after inflation adjustments, Astin said.

From 1980 to 1988, the percentage of freshmen who reported receiving Pell Grants, the federal government’s primary scholarship program for low- and middle-income students, dropped from 31.5% in 1980 to 15.6%, according to the survey.

Likewise, participation in federally supported work-study programs dropped steadily from 14.5% in 1980 to 6.6% in 1988. Even the percentage of freshmen receiving federally guaranteed loans--which had grown steadily between 1980 and 1986, from 20.9% to 25.4%--has declined sharply in the last two years. In the fall of 1988, 20.1% of students were recipients of such loans, down from 22.2% the year before.

Payment Burden

“The burden of paying for college has shifted increasingly to students, their families and the nation’s colleges and universities,” Astin said.

Despite all the fears about careers and money, the survey found some evidence that the celebrated materialism of 1980s college students may be peaking.

Interest in nursing rose a bit, from 4.0% to 4.4% of freshmen, but was still well below the 8.4% high in 1983. Teaching, never regarded as a path to riches, is the goal of 8.8%, steadily up from the low of 4.7% in 1983 yet very much less than the 23.5% of 1968.

The survey showed continued growth in the proportion of students who identify their political views as conservative or far right: 21.8%, up from 19.6% in 1987 and the low of 14.5% in 1973. Almost unchanged from the previous year was the 24.3% who said they were liberal or far left, up from 21.8% in 1980 but well below the peak of 38.1% recorded in 1971. Declining somewhat in recent years are the middle-of-the-road students, who were 53.9% of freshmen last fall.

Despite those self-descriptions, a strong majority of freshmen support traditional liberal stands on specific issues such as abortion and the role of government in curbing pollution. The big exceptions involve crime and drugs. Opposition to the death penalty is at an all-time low, 23.0%, down from 32.6% in 1978.