Students in East-Central Europe: Symmetry or asymmetry of life goals? A study of Poland and Ukraine

Abstract

The article makes an attempt to analyse scope and timing prospects of students’ life goals in two East-Central European countries – Poland and Ukraine. These two countries were under similar socio-economic circumstances in the last decade of the past century, but nowadays the situation is totally different. The study was conducted in November and December 2019 using the authors’ survey questionnaire carried out on the sample of 658 university students from Lublin and Kyiv. Our research showed that symmetry in students’ life goals primarily occurred in the scope of goals and values, with a greater focus on family in the case of Ukrainian students and on material goods and business activity for Polish students. Asymmetry was observed in the term of planned implementation of particular life goals: Ukrainian students expected stabilisation based on family, children, and apartment ownership within 5 years from graduation and Polish students expected such stabilisation within 10 years after graduation. Moreover, more optimistic expectations for the future were observed in the case of Ukrainian students.