academic

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES
just achieving a particular grade. An undesirable student, from the faculty member’s perspective,
is the student who is low on mastery orientation and high on performance orientation.
This student is overly focused on his or her grade and perhaps spends more time trying to
pin the instructor down on the particulars of the educational assessments used in class, at
the expense of learning the material. Table 2 shows the correlations between the various
academic entitlement scales. Of note is the finding that participants who feel the instructor
should make special accommodations for them tended to have lower levels of mastery orientation
and higher levels of performance and performance avoidance orientation. Furthermore,
students who felt they should be rewarded for effort and not just actual performance
were more likely to score higher on performance and performance avoidance orientation.
Table 2: Correlations Between Academic Entitlement Scales and Learning Orientation
Learning Orientation Accommodation Reward for Effort Control
Mastery
Performance
Performance Avoidance
-.26
.24
.30
-.01
.31
.36
-.11
.08
.15
Product Value
Note: Correlations are based on N=159 participants. Italicized values indicate significance
at the p < .05 level.
Thus findings to date support the proposition that academic entitlement, like psychological
entitlement, is maladaptive. Results thus far suggest that students who are high in academic
entitlement are more likely to engage in classroom incivility (Chowning & Campbell, 2009;
Nordstrom et al., 2009) and may adopt less effective learning orientation styles (Jackson et
al., 2010). Furthermore, it seems quite possible that future research will find evidence that
students high in academic entitlement will be more likely to encounter social conflict (Moeller
et al., 2008), and perhaps they will be more likely to exploit fellow students for their own
gain due to the relationship between academic entitlement and exploitative attitudes toward
others (Greenberger, et al. 2008).
-.07
.20
.08
Conclusion
Morrow (1994) warns us that the core values of higher education are at stake if entitlement
trumps achievement at our colleges and universities. He questioned the motivation of entitled
students by asking “If you don’t accept the value of academic practices, why have you gone
to the expense and the trouble of registering as a student in the university?” (p. 43). This is
still a fair question today that lies in the minds of many who are daily facing the challenge
of teaching and evaluating student “customers.” Thus while considering the economic realities
of institutional budgets and the unique characteristics of Millennials, educators need to
keep in the mind the impact of student entitlement on the values and objectives of higher
education. While researchers in this area are currently working with a multi-facted and dynamic
concept, there is agreement that student entitlement is real and that it is impacting
individuals and institutions. Academic entitlement has the potential to change the significance
of what it means to hold a university degree.
234