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