Abstract:

For the agro-industrial region the training of specialists with higher education from the rural residents is of great importance. Chelyabinsk is one of the largest agro-industrial regions of Russia. A complicating factor is that the social adaptation of the villagers to the student environment is associated with their adaptation to the urban way of life, which radically changes the way they live.

Despite the considerable researches of students’ social adaptation, there remains a lack of understanding as to how rural students’ social adaptation is connected with their adaptations to higher education. Our study seeks to fill this gap. The major research objective was to study the difficulties of social adaptation of people from rural areas to the training conditions at the university.

Methodology The theoretical foundations of the study were the works of famous foreign and Russian sociologists such as D. Dewey, F. Znanetsky, R. Merton, L. Park, T. Parsons, T. Tarde, M. G. Anokhin, Z. A. Danilova, L. V. Martynov, V. G. Popov. The primary data was collected using questionnaires. Three hundred and fifty respondents – students of tree universities, were questioned on the basis of quota sampling in the city of Chelyabinsk. The questionnaire concluded 78 questions aimed at exploring the main trends and contradictions of the process of villagers’ social adaptation to the students’ environment.

Results and discussion The study has revealed the main barriers of villagers’ social adaptation to student’s life (low quality schooling, the usual communicative kinship that does not fit into the realities of urban life, and the low material level).

Our research has fixed three main aspects of rural students’ social adaptation. Firstly, transition of students from the pre-university social status of a young man to a student. The main factor of the respondents’ socialization is a system of motivational orientations. The choice of motive has a bright material conditionality: high-income students often rely on status motives, while professional motives are dominated among students with low income.

Secondly, the labour socialization of students was investigated. It turned out that among those who earn extra money there are quite a lot of wealthy young people. The study has revealed various motives for their work: students with high income have the motive of their interest to work and professional considerations. Students’ with the low-income motive is the vital necessity. Important indicators of the success of the villagers’ social adaptation are their professional orientations. One of the main indicators is students’ satisfaction with their specialty. The study has shown that 49/0% of the respondents are satisfied with their choice and they are going to work by profession, 19.0% of the students dissatisfied with their specialty. 30.0% of the respondents would like to be engaged in business.

The third indicator of social adaptation is the transformation of the value system. The abrupt change of the rural way of life on the urban inevitably leads to changes in the value orientations of the young people. The research has fixed the trend: the dominance of wealth values over professional and spiritual ones in the students’ transition from junior to senior classes. The psychological aspect of social adaptation is associated with the dynamic from negative to positive student’s emotional moods as the student grows up.

Keywords:

Social adaptation, adaptation to the student environment, barriers of social adaptation, transformation of subcultural characteristics, rural youth.