University: A Cross-Cultural Study-What Its Meaning For Students

To make university life more meaningful, understanding of “university” from high schoolstudents could be of great help. Moreover it has becoming a trend for high-school students all-overthe world to finish their university studies in other country, it is obvious that there are differentculture and value reflections behind different or even same choices. A phenomenological meaningconstitution analysis is suitable to discover what “university/university study” means to high schoolstudents and to see if there are any differences among students from different grades. Then a cross-culture comparison will be made between China and Sweden. In Sweden all middle schoolstudents could go to university if they want to while in China only about3/10middle schoolstudents will get the chance to finish further study in university. However, in both countriesstudents have a lot of complains about university or university studies. That’s why it is important tofind out how they constitute “university” in their life-world. First,120students from Chinese andSwedish high school were asked to write anything they want about university or university studies..After data collection their writings were analyzed by the software MCA-minerva.MCA-minerva isdesigned to go deep in the way of individual meaning constitution while Sphinx is focused ongeneral situation. This research is under supervision of Associate Prof. Roger Sages Dept. ofPsychology, University of Lund.