THE VALUE-ORIENTATION CHARACTERISTICS OF LITHUANIAN ACADEMIC YOUTH’S LIFE STYLE: THE CONTEXT OF PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Nowadays, students have occurred in a highly contradictory situation – without a clear youth policy and state support in Lithuania, the hope that innovative, creative professional potential of the youth is to be assessed on a certain level and be in great demand on the labour market is being lost. This makes formulation and implementation of students’ orientations and strategies more difficult. In Lithuania, the situation when university graduates get spontaneously adjusted to existing conditions while choosing those norms and values which ensure financial independence, success, material stability is observed.
The aim of the research: to investigate value orientations of students while highlighting priority terminal values in a professional life style as well as to work out the life style typology.
The main research method: I. G. Senin’s (1991) questionnaire on terminal values. The research was carried out in 2009; 444 full-time physical education and sport speciality 1st-4th year students (275 male and 169 female) of Lithuanian universities took part in it.
While analysing the expression of relevance of life spheres, it was found out that students paid more attention to this life area and the values being implemented in it which was related with learning and gaining education: the area of education was evaluated in 3.84 points, the area of professional values was evaluated in 3.83 points. High points that were given to the sphere of education and professional activities allow us assume that students give much significance to a future profession; that is why they strive to increase the level of their education, to expand their world outlook, to gain new knowledge. They plan a big part of their time for professional activities, while acknowledging that one’s profession is the major guarantee of material welfare. Professional life is considered as a guarantee of stability of material conditions as well as active social contacts. Young people constantly ask a question of what should be done in order they could live in material welfare in the future. They are worried about possible concerns, unclear perspectives, incapability to foresee the future. Such tendency can be also related with the very situation of studies. Activities of students of physical education and sport speciality are predetermined by specificity of the study field related with high time-consumption for training and competitions of students going in for sports. That is why success of learning becomes a very relevant problem in the context of assessment of any other activities.
With regard to the motive for gaining university education, working out the life style typology and the results of this research, the following models of projection of contemporary students’ life style were singled out: the success-oriented life style (the dominating model of projection of a life style, corresponding to the pragmatic function of higher education); orientation towards high quality professional’s life style (corresponding to the socio-cultural function of higher education); the possessing-oriented life style while gaining material welfare (it corresponds to the pragmatic function of higher education); the profession-gaining-oriented life style corresponding to the professional function of university education; the high-status-gaining-oriented life style corresponding to the prestigious function of university education.