Abstract:

The modern world is unthinkable without rapid scientific and technological development and progress in various fields of knowledge. New scientific and technical discoveries and the need for high-tech developments require specialists with a high level of education and high-quality professional training. This applies not only to scientific and technical spheres, but also to natural-applied and humanitarian areas. Today's science is a synthetic alloy of various fields of knowledge, and the international corporations involved in development accumulate specialists from different countries with high requirements for the qualifications and the level of education.

All this makes higher education a prestigious and extremely attractive goal for young people. And if earlier a significant part of them agreed to follow in the footsteps of their parents, not all of whom had a higher education, and to engage in less qualified work, today the attractiveness of megacities with their numerous career opportunities makes young people use their studies at the university as a social lift for further career development.

More surprising is the fact that after entering universities many students are faced with a problem of a complete lack of motivation to learning, or are demotivated in the process of study, which often leads to a low level of quality of their studies, and sometimes makes them interrupt study for academic leave or give it up completely.

If obtaining secondary education is compulsory in most countries, and students themselves cannot actually fully avoid this responsibility, then higher education is an expensive and elitist form of development of the human personality, which initially implies the maximum investment of all mental, creative and physical potential from a person who decided to devote several years to obtaining higher education. In addition, in most countries, this is also a very expensive type of social lift, requiring huge financial costs from the student. Demotivation in this case turns out to be a waste of money and not an investment that should be made in the formation of a human personality.

For the students themselves, their families and the teaching staff of universities, such scenarios of a personality crisis become a problem that requires an integrated approach to its solution.

In the article, the authors will consider the reasons for the lack of motivation or demotivation of students, analyze possible approaches to solving this urgent problem. The article raises psychological, age, social and other possible factors affecting the appearance of such a difficulty in the educational process.
Pedagogical science has accumulated a wealth of experience in studying this problem, however, the modern challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have raised new challenges in this regard.

As a specific example, the article will consider the receipt of liberal arts education by students with parallel study in a non-linguistic university of the Chinese language. Obviously, such a difficult test as the study of the eastern hieroglyphic language is a serious challenge for the majority of students, which often reveals certain problems in learning among students, tests the strength of their motivation to study, and also makes them rethink their views of their future, of their place in it and the choice of his profession.

Keywords:

Motivation in learning, psychological and pedagogical problems, educational process, higher education, the Chinese language, the COVID-19 pandemic.