Abstract
It is the purpose of this paper to explore the relationship between the post-secondary educational aspirations and career perspectives in some detail. The data are taken from questionnaires given in December 1966 to over seven thousand Japanese senior-secondary school boys.
The study begins with a classification of college-aspiration types (1) day-college type, (2) night-college type, (3) Yes-No type, and (4) non-college type. The responses to questions concerning expected or contingency use of other opportunities for post-secondary education and training are tabulated against the college-aspiration types to provide other perspectives on educational aspirations and their meanings. Finally, various aspects of career perspectives are related to the types of college aspirations.
The findings are as follows :
(1) Japanese boys hold strong aspirations for symbolic or formal schooling. The day-college type indicates a high level of “symbolic” orientations toward education, whereas the non-collage type is much oriented toward “functional” or pragmatic education and training.
(2) The boys' perceptions of the market value of college degrees are closely associated with their aspirations for post-secondary schooling or training. The more oriented toward the elitist universities they are, the more they believe in the market value of degrees and the more they commit themselves to them.
(3) Each type of post-secondary educational aspiration embodies a relatively narrow perception of education, by which we may explain the Japanese peculiar phenomena “R, onin”, to some extents.
(4) Under prevailing conditions, a large proportion of Japanese boys will be frustrated with their educational hopes and also occupational expectations, for there is a slippage between their aspirations and attainments.
(5) The patterns of the linkage between the boy's college-aspirations and career perspectives are summarized readily : the day-college type prefers the higher-status positions with big corporations or government and those in the non-college type expresses a preference for medium or small employers with correspondingly modest positions. There seems to be a predominant “realism” along with their own lot among the boys in the non-college category, while those in the day-college type are “ambitious”.
