Uuden opiskelijatyypin synty : opiskelijoiden elämänvaiheet ja tieteenalaspesifien habitusten muovautuminen 1980-luvun yliopistossa

Abstract

This dissertation presents a summary of my research on university students, carried out during the 1980s at the University of Jyväskylä. In the course of my research I analysed university studies as a life-cycle stage and described the various study strategies used by students drawn from different disciplines. In the dissertation, however, the perspective has shifted from an analysis of students' life-stages to a generation analysis, on the basis of interviews, of the way of life of students and the characteristics of student culture, and to an analysis of the curricularization that has taken place in the university and the accompanying changes in its disciplinary cultures. The main purpose of this study is to provide a documentary analysis in which the subjective experiences of the interviewed students and an objective statistical analysis of their life-situation are synthesized in a discursive description of the current milieu and atmosphere of the university. The study comprised two research tasks. The first was to analyse, on the basis of the student interviews, the temporal differentiation of the university years. This is done by describing the differentiation of student culture, the fragmentation of students' life-world, and the changes in their life stages and identity formation. The second task was to explain the fragmentation of disciplinary cultures. This problem is approached from the perspective of the "hidden curriculum", the curricularization of the university, and the formation of discipline-specific habituses and changes in discipline cultures. A reanalysis of the interview data led to the following conclusions. First, the student years no longer constitute a "classically" academic life stage; instead, the modern student’s life is divided between study arid part-time employment. Second the economic and social "immaturity" of students hampers their identity formation. Third, student culture has lost its independence and vitality. Fourth, the basic structures of the lifeworld of students have fragmented, and it no longer revolves around the university. Fifth, the curricularization of the university has instrumentalized the study process and the relation of students to the institution itself. Finally, various discipline-based subcultures divide students increasingly sharply. In general the student generation of the 1980s differs so greatly from its predecessors that it can properly be called the first new type of student in generation Finnish academic life.