Young Adults in Modern Society: changing status and values

Abstract

In a society where the majority of young people are in formal schooling almost to the age of 20 criteria of adulthood are not any longer related to physical maturity. Universalisation of secondary education and mass higher education have led to a period of institutional segregation during the age range 15 to 20. Legal criteria of adulthood do not show any consistency. A small, increasingly unemployed, minority is not in school. Fundamental changes in the institutions of modern society have affected the status of young people to the extent that one can talk about a ‘new stage in life’: young adults. They tend increasingly to become a superfluous species outside the schools. Youth unemployment tends to go up independently of business cycles and to become closely related to level of formal education. Credentialism in the schools, boosted by the increased importance attached to formal education in the selection among job seekers, has created serious problems particularly at secondary level in an increasingly achievement‐oriented school. This has given rise to changing values embodied in various countercultures. Expressive values have gained importance relative to instrumental ones. Credentialism has tended to foster a ‘new educational underclass’ and to lead to distortions of genuine educational values. The gap between rhetoric and reality in today's schools tends to widen.