Youth as a strategic resource of future development: value orientations, plans, dreams

Abstract

Purpose: The paper is devoted to revealing of Voronezh universities students readiness degree to accept and support the ideology of innovative, advanced development of the country, the breakthrough into the VI techno-economic paradigm. Discussion: The undertaken sociological research includes, in the main, questions that were not raised by other researchers of youth problems. That concerns the students’ ideas about the Russia future scientific and technological development, their preferences in this area, plans for future professional career. The desire (or unwillingness) of respondents to engage in science, as well as their views on the prestige of professions, largely determining their behavioral strategies, are analyzed. The approach peculiarity to the questionnaire formulating is the inclusion to the questionnaire of several questions about the same one topic, but in different forms or reflecting different aspects of the topic, in order to obtain a more adequate result. Results: The study demonstrated that the accelerated development of the sixth techno-economic paradigm is hindered by the following value orientations of youth: the absence of a large, high dream and high goals; the shift of value orientations towards hedonism, excessive pragmatism; recognition of priority only those technologies of the VI techno-economic paradigm, which are directly related to the life quality and longevity; infantilism, lack of understanding that the life level and quality depend on the advanced technologies introduction; orientation to the work in science abroad.