Parental involvement in the offspring's university life and the commodification of higher education

Absztrakt (kivonat)

First of all, I would like to introduce the original research questions and hypotheses for this study, which examines the levels of parental involvement among Hungarian and international university students, and how the commodification of higher education affects them. The study answers the main research questions, such as how does parental involvement affect a university student’s experience, and in what ways are students and parents affected by the commodification of higher education? The empirical hypothesis of this study was that in general, there are differences in the level of parental involvement and both financial and mental support among Hungarian and international students, due to cultural and socioeconomic variations. The other aspect is that parents of especially Asian international students studying in Hungary, appear to be more controlling when it comes to their children’s academic life, which is a phenomenon what was also present in their children’s secondary school life, manifesting in private tutoring arranged by the parents, and private classes after school. Previous researchers in this regard mostly used qualitative interview methods, because it appears to be more effective in collecting student and parental experiences related to the topic, therefore this study was also conducted with a qualitative research method. While conducting overall twelve interviews, the focus for this study was not only Hungarian university students, but international students as well, regarding the socioeconomic and cultural differences of the students. Among the international university students, mostly Asians, all of them shared their experiences about overly involved parents. The main results after conducting the interviews proved the above mentioned research questions right. Another issue which emerged during the interviewing process was the question of strong financial support when it comes to tuition fees, or other expenses throughout college, or in contrast, a lack of support from parents. Based on the experiences of my interviewees, children of autonomy-supportive parents showed better mental health outcomes, such as a lower level of anxiety, and conversely children of overly involved parents (which was only a minority of students participating in this research) talked about issues with their mental health and wellbeing and had relatively higher levels of anxiety because of the parental control they experience.