Dynamics of the relative values of youth in education and in the labor market

Ivanov Sergei Yur'evich ORCID: 0009-0003-4498-3766 Doctor of Sociology Professor, M.A. Budanova Department of Theoretical and Special Sociology, Moscow Pedagogical State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, M. Pirogovskaya str., 1, office Building 1 soc-lab@yandex.ru Other publications by this author     Ivanova Dar'ya Vyacheslavovna ORCID: 0009-0003-1141-2350 PhD in Sociology Associate Professor, Department of Theoretical and Special Sociology named after M.A. Budanova, Moscow Pedagogical State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, M. Pirogovskaya str., 1, office Building 1 soc-lab@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Chvyakin Vladimir Alekseevich ORCID: 0000-0001-8166-9539 Doctor of Philosophy Professor, M.A. Budanova Department of Theoretical and Special Sociology, Moscow Pedagogical State University 117405, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Varshavskoye highway, 152-8-109, sq. 109 170558@inbox.ru Other publications by this author

The relevance of the study of the dynamics of relative values of youth in education and in the labor market is due to the fact that they are an important factor in the social regulation of personality behavior. It is important to note that at present the meaning of individual human values is undergoing significant changes. If the basic values still reflect their vital character, then in the structure of their individual (subjective) preferences and choices, tendencies to rethink them have been actualized. The variability of ideas about the importance of education and profession has acquired a social trend.

This is due to the fact that relative values are those values that vary depending on the social context and qualities of a person: his social class, personal history, age, gender and nationality. Relative values are quite dynamic, their values are hardly noticeable and have a temporary (transient) character. In a broad sense, the concept of "value" represents the stable views of an individual about the significance of certain phenomena for him, the goals of life, and the means to achieve them. The value system must meet the need to reproduce certain behavioral guidelines, it is an important factor in regulating social interaction. The origins of values, according to M.A. Makarevich, are predetermined by the social nature of the activity performed ^{[1, p. 871]}.

Education, of course, plays a key role in building a certain value structure. Education, as one of the key social institutions of the modern knowledge society, ensures the formation of human potential, is responsible for the transfer of certain experience to new generations, personal socialization within the framework of its development and adaptation to new social relations. In addition, in the socio-cultural aspect, this institute is designed to ensure the movement and distribution of knowledge based on a value basis.

In this regard, in the context of the increment of scientific knowledge, scientists pay special attention to the dynamics of value orientations. Dynamics will include all those processes that fix and ensure value changes taking place in a particular social system. When studying the transformation of values, several questions can be raised: firstly, how has the structure of values and its individual elements changed; secondly, to what extent have the ratios of elements in the composition of the studied social community changed. The change in value differences over time is the subject of separate consideration. Note that we will focus on systemic changes in values within the field of education – not in isolation from each other, but in the context of their relationship by their relative values.

The subject of the study is the process of transformation of the values of modern youth in the context of social adaptation in the labor market.

The purpose of the study is to identify the conditions and main causes of the dynamics of the "relative" values of youth in education and the labor market

The novelty of the research lies in the concretization of the dynamics of the "relative" values of young people in education in relation to the conditions of their social adaptation in the labor market.

Methodology and methods of research. In the study of the dynamics of values, general theoretical methods (synthesis, comparison, analogy) were used, general scientific methodological concepts (structural-functional, interpretative) were used in the analysis of scientific and theoretical approaches, secondary data analysis methods (content analysis) were used to study value transformations.

The solution to the problem of the formation of relative values is built in the article on the basis of N. Luhmann's systematic approach, which notes the arbitrary nature of the emergence of a social structure without the need for any general forms of agreement in norms and values ^{[2, p. 105]}. It is interesting to note that modern research by sociologists (G. Buck, E. Jacobson, A.G. Zdravomyslov, D.B. Ikramov, etc.) confirms the relevance of classical ideas on the formation of value-oriented unity and its influence on social processes ^{[3, C. 743]}. Thus, value-oriented unity as one of the indicators of social group cohesion makes it possible to streamline professional interpersonal relations in the working group. The analysis of individual mechanisms of value unity allows specialists to explore the normative and legal culture of socialization in various types of activities, including in the field of education. In particular, the "image of the world", which is constructed by students, stands out as a research imperative.

At the same time, despite the simplicity of creating a single value basis for the younger generation, the education system faces difficulties in implementing the mechanism of its formation - this leads to a simplified interpretation by social partners. This article is devoted to the coverage of these issues, which summarizes scientific and theoretical approaches and existing experience in the formation of values that are "relative" in nature and are tied to a socially significant situation.

Monographic studies and publications by foreign and Russian sociologists are devoted to the transformation of value orientations of various social groups. Among the domestic authors, it is necessary to highlight the works of M.K. Gorshkov, F.E. Sherega, N.A. Seliverstov, A.A. Zaitsev, in which the main attention is paid to identifying the institutional basis of the process of socialization of youth in various fields of activity of companies. The works of N.M. Surnin, A.A. Ilyukhin, S.V. Ilyukhin, N.I. Lepin and I.S. Shushpanov emphasize the need to analyze the institutional foundations of the value basis, the interpretation of social behavior of the individual ^{[4, 5, 6, 7]}.

Recently, sociologists have increased their interest in this issue. This is due to the need to assess the features of social adaptation of representatives of various social groups, as a result of ongoing social changes, increasing the importance of human resources. Research on the value basis in the understanding of proponents of appropriate approaches is largely guided by an established value system. However, to a lesser extent, the emphasis is on the mechanisms of their reproduction, as well as their socially significant essential nature. In this regard, it is important to "bind" values to a certain institutional environment and assess their dynamics, as well as analyze the processes associated with how the traditional value system is replaced by a new one, as well as value inflation for certain generational groups.

In the context of socio-economic and technological transformations, it is important for social partners to create a flexible system of professional training of specialists focused on the needs of the modern labor market, as well as capable of ensuring their effective socio-professional adaptation. Among the key benchmarks ensuring the progressive development of the domestic economy and its competitiveness in the context of import substitution, priority is given to the development of human potential. It is based on the use of innovative methods of vocational training, the use of high-tech technologies, a more complete relationship between science and production. Only with a balanced use of labor and educational potential can our society claim to be a progressive change.

It is important to highlight the value basis that determines the trajectories of professional development of young professionals, as well as guidelines in the context of their professional motivation and personal development.

Of course, the introduction of high-tech technologies and a fundamental revision of the organization of labor activity should be accompanied by positive changes in the labor behavior of individuals, changes in the motivation of human resources. At the same time, today there is a process of transformation of the value orientations of various social groups of young people in the context of strengthening "consumer sentiment". Moreover, this process often goes against creative labor values, erodes the positive motivation of boys and girls for highly effective work. The fixed social polarization, value asynchrony, and social contradictions do not contribute to the expanded reproduction of human potential. In essence, the benchmarks of personal development acquire a "relative" dimension and are projected onto value inflation.

Let's turn to the results of a comprehensive sociological study "Value orientations of modern youth" conducted in 2015-2021 by ZIRCON. The sample size is 2 thousand people. The study participants were young people between the ages of 14 and 35. The study was based on a comparative analysis of the results of surveys conducted by a group of research companies within the framework of the transformation of value orientations of young people ^[8].

The results of the surveys record the transformation of personal priorities in various spheres of life. The dominant values of individualism and personal success are noted. On the contrary, values associated with a focus on mutual assistance are becoming less popular among young people. It is noteworthy that many young people put their personal interests higher than the interests of the country and society as a whole (67% and 33%, respectively). Moreover, young people under the age of 25 are twice as likely to choose human rights compared to the proportion of those who give priority to the interests of the state ^[9]. This confirms the fact that value variations acquire the format of "relative" ones. The observed transformations allow young people to quickly adapt to existing social realities.

The value dynamics has not bypassed the social and labor sphere, including the labor market. What is the value attitude of young people towards the profession?  Today, the youth's demand for self-development and growth, meaningful work, and "support for the elder" is being actualized. There is a trend towards the "humanization" of professional guidelines. Of interest are the results of a survey of specialists from the Department of Economic Sociology of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Higher School of Economics (2022). The sample size was 5 thousand undergraduate students from eight regional universities. The survey was devoted to the analysis of the labor values of a new generation of students ^[10].

As the results of the study showed, meaningful values are giving way to instrumental ones. The top "relative" values of modern youth include a high salary (63%), personal interest in work (61%), job reliability (46%), its compliance with the knowledge and skills of the student (41%) and career prospects (37%) ^[10].

The sphere of education most contrastingly captures the value transformations of the younger generation. Obtaining higher education is often considered as a given and an indispensable attribute of the career advancement of boys and girls. At the same time, the mosaic and digitalization of employment, professional surfing, and violation of the order of socialization of youth create risks of their deprofessionalization, a decrease in the quality of human capital, and a later entry of young people into adulthood. All this indicates the erosion of the traditional conditions for the formation of the classical value of "professional activity". In essence, we are talking about the dominant "relative" value system, which is tied to specific conditions, which often do not coincide with traditional value concepts laid down by previous generations. Moreover, value dysfunction does not at all reduce the effect of social risks for young people.

Within the framework of N. Luhmann's concept, we can suggest that instead of a value-based approach in the educational sphere, today young people are experiencing the formation of preferences, when values are replaced by communication elements that insure them against the risks of being unclaimed in the labor market. In fact, education is a systemic element of society that offers applicants insurance against risks and threats, but this does not mean that the modern younger generation immediately, without relatively modern conditions and expectations, takes such an offer for granted. Within the framework of a systematic approach, education is not a value and is not part of a value system, since everything it offers can be "disrupted", according to young people. The modern younger generation of Russians is not ready to accept education as a value implicitly, that is, as a given to be reckoned with. In other words, it is only as one of the elements of the trajectory selection, on a scale of no less priority for the subsequent selection of goals. And since education is one of the dominant values in the traditional social system, and not an element of preference, we are increasingly witnessing a conflict of meanings that different generations put into it. All this leads us to an understanding of the relativity of this value and the instability of its existence ^[2].

The data of numerous studies confirm the fact of polarization of values in the educational industry. HSE sociologists conducted a study on the topic "Human success and independence in a changing world." The sample size was 5 thousand first-year students from nine Russian universities: BFU, FEFU, KFU, LETI, TSU, TPU, TSU, NEFU and SFU. The survey examined students' attitudes towards higher education, study plans, expectations from the educational process and extracurricular activities ^[11].

The results of the survey showed that the main motives for students who set the vector of "professional reproduction" are obtaining special knowledge (59%), as well as improving their chances of employment (54%). Then, the survey participants identified motives related to personal growth (44%), life experience (29%) and expanding horizons (19%). The least significant reasons for studying at a university are the opportunity to find oneself in an educated and socio—cultural environment - 15%, to improve one's social status - 14% ^[11].

Despite the fact that one of the key positions in the formation of human capital belongs to the Institute of education, judging by the results of surveys and the dominant instrumental values, its decentralization cannot always cope with modern challenges and meet the needs of the national economy.

Of course, the value of the profession today acquires a special sound and has its own dimension for young people. The famous American sociologist T. Parsons focused special attention on the value component of the education system, which operates within the framework of rational logic and dominant social ideals ^[12]. In this regard, the task of the education system to form "professional values" among young people should be the most urgent. Moreover, this process should be linked to the changing demands of modern society. In general, it is important for each social group and social institution to form its own "value" scale of values, which allows effectively neutralizing the costs of their implementation.

Today, young people give priority to the opportunity to develop those personal qualities that allow them to develop successfully. In this regard, the expectation of their development from the education system is fully justified.

Of interest are the results of a study conducted by the M.A. Budanova Department of Theoretical and Special Sociology of the Moscow State University in 2022 on the topic "Development of agreed criteria and technologies for monitoring the quality of pedagogical education in pedagogical universities of the CIS member states". A total of 5,318 respondents were interviewed. The online survey was attended by students of various courses, forms and areas of training representing pedagogical universities of the CIS member states, including: Armenia; Belarus; Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Moldova; the Russian Federation; Tajikistan; Uzbekistan. One of the objectives of the study was to assess the impact of the social environment on the transformation of the value vector of professional development of young people.

The study showed that increasing the competitiveness of young professionals largely depends on what personal qualities they will have formed and developed. A fixed personal profile allows each graduate to fully realize the potential inherent in him. 

The modern labor market requires more specialists who can work with modern IT technologies, independently assess the situation and make responsible decisions. The discrepancy between what social practices require and what a young person acquires can be characterized as a crisis phenomenon. A socially significant institutional environment has a significant impact on the trajectory of professional development. It allows you to form a certain value profile among young people. At the same time, the training of young people within the framework of the social dysfunctions of the "outgoing" economy can lead to an "education crisis". With an increase in the "level" of education, the risk of non-compliance with "market" requirements among young people may not always decrease.

The value transformations observed today are most directly expressed in changes in personal qualities, ways and methods of their assessment.

In this regard, the respondents were asked the following questions: "Evaluate the formation of which personal qualities is the most significant for you?", "Evaluate the formation of which personal qualities is a university capable of forming?" (The assessment is made on a five–point scale, where 1 is the minimum score, not significant; 5 is the maximum score, most significant; 0- I find it difficult to answer)

As the survey results showed, many students agree that the university is able to form significant personal qualities. However, the range of personal qualities that is not always formed fully meets the needs of modern students. The distribution of responses is shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

The balance of assessments of significant and emerging personal qualities, %%

As you can see, the assessment by young people of personal qualities that are significant for them and those formed by the university is similar. Young people focus primarily on instrumental personal qualities. The top 3 main qualities include:

- independence;

- responsibility;

- self-organization.

It is obvious that a number of priority areas of training should be implemented in educational work at universities: to create conditions for the effective use of a multi-level system of student training, the implementation of humanitarian and general cultural programs aimed at developing a worldview and teamwork skills. This allows you to ensure responsibility for making independent management decisions. 

Comparison of the evaluation series shows that the greatest discrepancies in the balance of individual–university grades are observed in such qualities as creativity (0.54), sociability (0.42). The lowest differences in estimates are observed in the quality of teamwork (0.18).

The study of the qualitative profile showed that the university primarily forms students' independence, responsibility, critical thinking, and sociability, that is, those "technological" qualities that are directly related to personal potential. The combination of these qualities with a certain hierarchy of values is significant when employers choose young personnel.

Thus, one of the main problems for modern employers is insufficient quantitative and qualitative staffing. Realizing the complexity of the tasks, universities in the training of young professionals are guided by the basic mechanisms and values inherent in the requirements of modern sectors of the economy. At the same time, universities need not only to create conditions for the manifestation of creative, creative abilities of the individual, but also to actively implement a set of activities that allow young people to unleash their personal potential. The implemented activities should be developed into a detailed list of goals, objectives and achieved results for each target group of students.

There is no doubt that the contribution of universities to the formation of the civic position of young people is quite high. Nevertheless, maintaining the achieved level and increasing it remains an important task in the framework of educational work with young people. This is evidenced by the fact that students rated the contribution of the university to the formation of personal qualities "honesty" and "citizenship" at 4.08 points (82%). The educational activities and the educational process implemented at the university are directly related to the practice of education. They are largely related to the knowledge that a young person receives, and give him an understanding of the values and norms of life in society. However, this knowledge is often not enough for adequate behavior, it is necessary to form an attitude towards this knowledge and, most importantly, the experience of socially significant interaction. The conditions for the effective functioning of the educational process are: the presence of a goal shared by all subjects of the educational environment; a unified pedagogical concept focused on the priorities of humanistic education.

Obviously, as part of the implementation of the third mission of universities, we are talking about the formation of students' civic position and social design skills. The development of independence and initiative among young people, combined with transparency and control, as well as the orientation of educational programs to the needs of the labor market and students, allows us to solve many problems of reaching a new level of training for a competitive specialist.

For a long time, humanity has been assigned the role of a "nature transformer", an active actor whose efforts help not only to improve its own nature, but also the institutional environment. This task of mankind was conditioned by the natural evolution and strengthening of civilization, where education played a primary role. Now, the functional role of the social institute of education has expanded significantly and is due to its increasing role in building professional trajectories of personal development. Another thing is, how is this role implemented?

It should be noted that in conditions of social tension among various generational youth groups, there is an increasing decrease in the popularity of the value of education as a mechanism of individual social mobility. In addition, employers often disclaim responsibility for the process of training young professionals. The additional costs of employers to improve the skills of young people are not always correlated with the professional loyalty of young employees. The relativity of the value framework being built presupposes the satisfaction of the individual's actual needs on the principle of "here and now".

Supporting O. Comte, many researchers, for example, the British social anthropologist J. Fraser consolidated the movement from the pre-scientific to the scientific consciousness for each period of history, rationalizing natural logic and linking the progress of society with the development of the value of education, consolidating the essence of the development of morality in the behavior of subsequent generations. However, social changes, the damage that humanity inflicted on itself, reduced the importance of the value of education in improving human potential, progress and preservation of civilization ^[13].

Today, multiculturalism is replacing linear perception, and with it a change in the perception of values, a multi-paradigm choice. Even W.G. Sumner in his work "Folk Customs" noted that "the value or harmfulness of morals depends entirely on their justification by the conditions of life and the interests of place and time" ^[14].

Summarizing what has been said, we note that modern living conditions for many representatives of the younger generation have also changed the attitude towards the value of education. There is an emerging social conflict between the demands of society for the formation of an intellectual elite and the denial by a number of social partners of education as a resource necessary to achieve the set strategic objectives. In the context of the increased polarization of modern society, the socialization of the younger generation justifies the horizon of personal planning. The latter is determined by the values that are conditioned by the cultural environment. Moreover, such an environment is formed both in the parent family, among peers, and at school and at university.

The assumption is confirmed that education, especially higher education as an indicator of growth, becomes "technological" and reduces its value priority for many objective reasons. One of them is related to the fact that, having become widespread several years ago, higher education has formed one of the tools for strengthening the social stratification of society. Lowering the bar of intellectual demands, expanding the scope of attracting applicants with unformed intellectual potential to the university - led to "professional dysfunction", choosing not a profession or specialty, but the opportunity to get to any budget places of any university and training profile. Another reason is the inability of higher education to justify its value, both in the eyes of employers and in the eyes of graduates, since today in many areas there is no direct correlation between receiving high salaries and a higher education diploma.

In fact, another question arises: why does the salary motivator outweigh the value of professionalism? It should be noted here that today social and labor conditions are directly related to survival and adaptation in a rather difficult, aggressive environment.

If we take the pyramid of A. Maslow, a person considers many needs precisely as a social, and not an "intellectual necessity". Moreover, self-realization closes the top of the pyramid, which is associated not so much with the intellectual and moral development of the individual, not with reasonable action, as L.F. Ward rightly believed at the time, but with the instinct of survival in conditions of social risk ^[15].

Another well-known Polish sociologist, B. Malinowski, in his research noticed a direct connection between social institutions and the basic human needs that they satisfy. The conclusion that the scientist made was unambiguous. It is survival that is the only absolute value, and all other values can be considered as a means of its realization ^[16]. And since education is not considered by many as the very institution that will help survival in the created conditions, its value among young people decreases several times. The same idea was consistently revealed by the English social anthropologist, representative of the structural and functional approach A.R. Radcliffe-Brown ^[17]. He justifies the emerging problem by saying that values such as moral or religious (in our case, the value of education) are products of society and can only be considered in the context of their role in preserving social solidarity and the well-being of a particular society. Therefore, the absolute value is the "survival of society" and if a specific group of young people for their own survival is looking for other ways of adaptation other than education, then in many cases this indicates not so much a decrease in its role in society as the inability of this particular group to see it as a mechanism for its further development. Thus, a deep assessment suggests that the values of education acquire the format of "relative" for each individual individually.

It was the idea of dividing values according to the priority of "survival – self-expression" that became a breakthrough at the beginning of the century in the global studies of V. Inghart and K. Welzel ("World Values Survey"), who drew up a world map, placing all the dynamics of values on the coordinate axes, depending on the socio-cultural priorities of different civilizations ^[18]. The result of these studies was the assumption that it is precisely those civilizations that achieve the best economic result, where priority is given to the values of self-expression rather than survival.

From a socio-economic point of view, the competitiveness of modern society largely depends on the predisposition to innovation. The law of competitive specialization of a nation proposed by G. Hovstede is based on the division of societies inclined or not inclined to long-term orientation ^[19]. For example, in the USA there is a fairly low threshold for long-term professional and value orientation and a high degree of expectation of a quick result, unlike eastern nations, which are much more inclined to invest in the economy for the long term. The Russian economy is counting on long-term projects, where education is undoubtedly one of the leading links. However, rapid mobilization actions related to innovations in the national economic system are not easy.

It is also interesting to note Alexander Auzan's study "Cultural codes of economics". The scientist notes the duality inherent in Russia in the socio-economic demonstration of collectivism-individualism, when radical innovations, network interactions and the demand for justice and mutual support simultaneously coexist in the country ^[20]. According to S. Huntington, our country can be called "torn apart", that is, in order to survive in a competitive struggle, it absorbed the management technologies and values of competitors, divided the country into elites, who absorbed them and the majority - the mass, which remained in the traditional dimension ^[21]. We can also observe this in relation to the value of education, when, along with the intellectual class, the "masses" rush to higher education, whose values are the trajectories of survival, not self-development. All this generates a truly national phenomenon of increased adaptability to both state reforms and external social changes. Moreover, the Institute of higher education is only one of such tools here, but not the dominant one.

One of the side effects of such a process is, on the one hand, an overabundance of intellectual power, and, on the other, a low "sensitivity" of both society and the state to private intellectual property. All this significantly reduces the level of importance of intellectual work in society and puts it on a par with other professional competencies, reflected both in the salary of intellectual workers and in the assessment of their activities. Therefore, it is quite difficult to convert high-quality intellectual human capital in our country into the economic potential of the nation, especially given the reduced international intellectual mobility over the past few years. And the transformation of intellectual labor into a field of risk and emergency, called by A. Auzan "short-term mobilization", on the one hand, accumulates all possible resources, but, on the other hand, does not give the effect of stability ^{[22, 23]}. In order to invest in education as a long-term resource, it is obviously necessary to increase public confidence in the institution of higher education and, in general, in educational reforms in particular.  This means trust not only in the plans, but also in the results obtained, prolonged for a long period. And first of all, it is important to understand that higher education is the institution without which it is impossible to implement a model of neither leadership nor sustainable development, and even maintain a constantly catching up stage of transformation.

1. The observed processes of transformation of values in the system of social relations are largely related to the fact that the trajectories of personality development change under the influence of objective and subjective conditions. In this regard, the key role is assigned to the Institute of education. It is this institute that focuses on social change and focuses on the professional socialization of the new generation.

2. The trajectories of professional development determined in the learning process make it possible to reduce "value inflation" and generate demand for the most demanded professional knowledge and competencies for society. The observed process of "value inflation" suggests that industrial and social partners have to "tighten" the professional skills of at least a quarter of employed graduates.

3. The problem of some discrepancy between the capabilities of graduates and the needs of employers seems to be a rather significant loss of the value of professional activity and the leveling of some graduates' ability and motivation for self-development. In this sense, we are talking about the relativity of subjective values and the need to link them, on the one hand, to the strategy of social and labor adaptation of young people in the labor market, on the other - to the motivation of sustainable personal growth in general. 

Conclusion

It can be stated that the educational environment and labor market conditions act as the main condition for the transformation of the system of social and labor values of youth. Such a transformation acquires the character of a stable trend and is accompanied by some negative sentiments among young people, which relate primarily to such necessary qualities as independence, responsibility and self-organization.

Such trends and moods acquire the character, although relative, but rather stable values of youth. There is no contradiction in this case, since dynamism in the structure of subjective values becomes a determining factor. Therefore, educational work in universities should be aimed at implementing not only priority areas of training, but also at creating conditions conducive to the development of a professional worldview. The interconnection of educational institutions, social and industrial partners seems to be a defining and fundamental condition for the social and labor adaptation of young people in the labor market.