Examination of Socio-Economic and Socio-Cultural Factors Influencing Aspiration Levels of Youth with respect to their Education Levels: an Experimental Examination

Abstract

With changing socio-economic backdrops, increasing opportunities for education, exposures of media and technology, the youth irrespective of socio-cultural differences are having more aspirations. For the youth of developing countries, the government, non-govt. and international non-govt. organizations are working to improve their overall status by implementing several programs and schemes. Exclusively raising the status of tribal youth living in remote rural areas in Odisha, India, many special programs is there to assist them. The study explores into tribal youth’s aspiration aiming to assess whether their aspirations bear a resemblance to that of the non-tribal youth studying in colleges. This study mainly focuses on youth between the age group of seventeen to twenty-three years on what they aspire to achieve i.e. to become and have in their personal lives. The data was collected randomly from twelve colleges (6 colleges each in urban and remote rural areas) and descriptive statistics was used for analysis. The results show that youth’s aspirations are similar in kind but only differ in degrees. The youth are found not so inclined to politics, entrepreneurship and business but they aspire to have a job especially govt. employment. Moreover, their socio-economic family backdrops and educational level don’t bear many relationships in influencing their aspirations. The study implications are discussed in the context of policy and programs for youth development in India.