Research Proposal

Working Title: The Student as Consumer Mentality: A Cancer to Existence

Topic

            Many college students today are finding themselves in psychological turmoil because the conditions encountered in higher education hinder the ability for the mind to learn, adapt, and function in society. This is problematic for the very internal growth and development that higher education is meant to offer for developing minds. I will examine the possible factors that may be leading to such intellectual deficiency—academic pressure, financial burden, perceived control, etc.—and attempt to relate them to the aftermath of the privatization of higher education and its effects on the human psyche. Privatization has lead to a paradigm in which students are “consumers” and degrees are “products,” and this market-driven nature contributes to lower academic performance, less internal growth, and poor mental health for students. This epidemic is surely raising eyebrows, but the exact causes are both controversial and difficult to quantify. After all, these environmental effects can surely exist without privatization. In order to establish a relationship between privatization and the present environment from which students intellectually suffer, I will first attempt to explain the inner workings of the human mind through the psychology of motives, behavior, and learning. Basic environmental conditions that deter the mind from purposeful growth and retainment will be examined. I will then explain the effects of privatization and how it has contributed to a college atmosphere plagued by consumerism and automaticity. After, I will demonstrate how such an atmosphere impairs learning and internal development by encouraging flawed motives that are detrimental to wellbeing and productive behavior. It is this type of environment that heavily contributes to the lack of development and intrinsic growth of students. I am interested in this topic because, from my own experiences, it is evident that college life is infused with automatic, robotic behaviors. Many students I know just attend to get by in life without experiencing any meaningful, internal drive to pursue goals that feed their intellect. This makes it hard for people to identify with themselves and their paths in life. I am also minoring in psychology and interested in speculating possible ways in which humanity can successfully evolve and prosper without destroying itself. The environment that privatization creates in higher education, specifically through consumerism and automacity, is contributing to a crisis that is reducing intellect, wellbeing, and the ability for students to be aware and responsive to a rapidly changing environment.

Research Question

Does the environment that privatization creates for college students elicit behaviors, motives, and attitudes that contribute to less knowledge retainment and a lack of meaningful, internal growth?

Theoretical Frame

As previously mentioned, a degree is now essentially a “product” while the student is the “consumer” who strives to acquire it. This concept is addressed in many scholarly works. One example can be derived from the view of Molesworth et al., who draw from Fromm’s humanist philosophy (Fromm, 1995) to argue that higher education is moving toward an atmosphere in which students are adapting to a “student-as-consumer” mindset due to the nature of the “market-led” university. With this mindset, intellectual capacity of students can decrease while they seek to ‘have a degree’ rather than ‘be learners’ (278). Such an environment can cause students to be passive to learning rather than having a learner identity by which they are actively engaged. This type of existential mindset in itself can reduce mental awareness and responsiveness.

Another work discusses the theme of “automacity” in behavior and the burdening need for fulfillment created by consumerism, which both decrease “mindfulness”. Mindfulness, or the awareness and ability to see the happenings of one’s inner and outer worlds, is crucial for mental health and wellbeing. Reflecting on other works cited within her own (Cushman, 1990; Fromm, 1955), Erika L. Rosenberg explains the automacity of consumer behavior, “What and how much we consume stems more from unconscious choices than from mindful deliberation. Advertising capitalizes on this automaticity to exploit the insatiable need for fulfillment that burdens many modern humans in industrialized countries” (107). Accordingly, consumerism can create a mindset in which people have the motive to constantly fulfill themselves by acquiring materialistic products to the point that it becomes automatic behavior. When automacity is the driving force, fulfillment resides only on the surface where it is not consciously embedded. This causes it to be temporary and extrinsic rather than intrinsic and long lasting; lifestyles tend to be rather robotic. Therefore, the fulfillment always recedes and the empty self continuously and unconsciously tries to recover. This burden takes a huge toll on the human mind.

In terms of the degree as a product, it becomes extrinsic rather than intrinsic. Students turn toward pursuing degrees that are more career-focused and likely to offer employment with higher salaries (Bunce et al. 3). In this common scenario, the motive to acquire a degree is more materialistic than it is mindful. This encourages a state of have while discouraging a state of being. A state of have can be extremely detrimental to enthusiasm and motivation in some ways. Tori DeAngelis, a freelance journalist for the American Psychological Association, discusses how Knox College psychologist Tim Kasser, PhD, explains extrinsic motives: “Kasser distinguishes extrinsic goals—which tend to focus on possessions, image, status and receiving rewards and praise—from intrinsic ones, which aim at outcomes like personal growth and community connection and are satisfying in and of themselves.” He continues to explain that an extrinsic goal like product acquisition leads to greater unhappiness, poorer moods, and more psychological problems (52). Degrees are increasingly being perceived as an extrinsic goal. They are approached with the student-as-consumer mindset due to the privatization of higher education, and this is shifting the motive from a goal of deep, meaningful fulfillment to a goal more along the lines of product acquisition. This kind of mental navigation throughout college is so automatic and external that students become more passive and disconnected, as described in many works that will be examined. This influences the idea that feeling better depends on others and events changing for the better; there is a low degree of personal control. Jerry M. Burger examines research of personal control and concludes in part that “situational and personality variables that increase the likelihood of a poor outcome and increase the severity of the consequences of the poor outcome will lead to a greater chance that the person will relinquish control, experience anxiety, or do more poorly on a subsequent task” (254). If students accept that they exist as a commodity, this situational variable can cause a loss of personal control while leading to psychological distress and decreased responsiveness.  This can also lead to a decrease in social connectedness, which may be responsible for rising levels of depression. This and the other situational variables discussed are all affects of privatization that hinder internal growth and skillful adaptability.

Research Plan

I will begin my research by examining the rise of privatization in higher education and the effects it has had on institutions thus far by discussing works of Collinge, Nathan, and Steel & Williams. I will then discuss studies that demonstrate problems with the higher education paradigm and how students are lacking in growth and skill development. Many of these can be related to the aftermath of privatization. Furthermore, the study by Molesworth et al. is a great source for bringing up the theory of the “student-as-consumer” mindset within higher education. It sheds light on some of the negative effects this can have on the human psyche and is related to many of the affects of privatization. From here, I will bring up the literature of Erich Fromm to examine the having mode and the being mode (theme of “being versus having”). This will help me demonstrate more of what the human mind experiences when it is influenced by such a mindset, and as a result link privatization, student-as-consumer mentality, and poor mental health.

The next work I will examine is that of Erika L. Rosenberg to discuss the “automacity” of consumer behavior, which reduces mindfulness and intrinsic motivation in achieving goals—like receiving a degree. At this point I will discuss the article by Tori DeAngelis from the APA to help me outline the significance of intrinsic goals that lead to personal growth, fulfillment, and connection with others. A lack of personal control and social connection is associated with extrinsic goals and automacity, so it is useful to proceed by discussing the works of Burger and a few others. Again, I will link these variables to the affects of privatization. I will end by examining paradigms in which mental health prospers, suggesting ways to battle this detrimental mindset to overcome the intellectual impairment that is partly caused by current educational practices (i.e. mindfulness, creating an association between the product and something pleasant).

Working Bibliography

Burger, Jerry M. "Negative reactions to increases in perceived personal control." Journal of personality and social psychology, vol. 56, no. 2, 1989, pp. 246-256, https://www.scu.edu/media/college-of-arts-and-sciences/psychology/documents/Negative-Reactions-to-Control-Review.pdf. Accessed 23 Oct. 2016.

Cheney, George, Jill McMillan, and Roy Schwartzman. "Should We Buy the “Student-As-Consumer” Metaphor?" The Montana Professor, vol. 7, no. 3, 1997, pp. 8-11, http://mtprof.msun.edu/Fall1997/Cheney.html. Accessed 22 Oct. 2016.

Collinge, Alan Michael. The Student Loan Scam. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009. Print.

DeAngelis, Tori. "Consumerism and its discontents." Monitor on Psychology, vol. 35, no .6, 2004, pp. 52, http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/discontents.aspx. Accessed 26 Oct. 2016.

Fromm, Erich. To Have or To Be?. Harper & Row, 1976.

Goldstein, A., Déry, N., Pilgrim, M., Ioan, M., & Becker, S. (2016). Stress and binge drinking: A toxic combination for the teenage brain. Neuropsychologia, 90251-260. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.07.035

http://fortune.com/2015/06/16/ryan-smith-internship-advice/

Kruisselbrink Flatt, Alicia. "A Suffering Generation: Six Factors Contributing to the Mental Health Crisis in North American Higher Education." College Quarterly, vol.16, no. 1, 2013. Accessed 15 Oct. 2016.

Mike Molesworth , Elizabeth Nixon & Richard Scullion. “Having, being and higher education: the marketisation of the university and the transformation of the student into consumer.” Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 277-287, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562510902898841. Accessed 23 Oct. 2016.

Misra, Ranjita, and Michelle McKean. "College students' academic stress and its relation to their anxiety, time management, and leisure satisfaction." American Journal of Health Studies 16.1 (2000): 41.

Nathan, Rebekah. My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student. New York: 
Penguin, 2006.

Rosenberg, Erika L. "Mindfulness and consumerism.” Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle for a Good Life in a Materialistic World, edited by Tim Kasser and Allen D. Kanner. Washington, Psychological Association, 2004, pp. 107-125, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Erika_Rosenberg/publication/232442892_Mindfulness_and_consumerism/links/57d6c10a08ae6399a39599d6.pdf. Accessed 22 Oct. 2016.

Ross, Shannon E., Bradley C. Niebling, and Teresa M. Heckert. "Sources of Stress Among College Students." Social psychology, vol. 61, no. 5, 1999, pp. 841-846.

Schmookler, Andrew Bard. The illusion of choice: How the market economy shapes our destiny. SUNY Press, 1993.

Shin, Lisa M., and Israel Liberzon. "The Neurocircuitry of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety Disorders." Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 35, no. 1, 2010, pp. 169-191. http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v35/n1/full/npp200983a.html. Accessed 23 Oct. 2016.

Steele, James B. and Lance Williams. "Who Got Rich Off the Student Debt Crisis?" Reveal News (June 28, 2016). Web. https://www.revealnews.org/article/who-got-rich-off-the-student-debt-crisis/