Category: Student

Decades ago, attending college was not a necessity, but rather an optional path an individual chooses to further their education. During these times a high school diploma was a sufficient qualification to receive a well-paying job. Although the push towards liberating student loans and their debt can get put into the cost of living for students and their books with slightly increasing taxes, it’ll benefit the economy. Today, college is a prerequisite for a baseline of profitability.

With student debt at an all-time high, many people look back and notice the skyrocketing prices of college loans and student debt. A small number of students who enroll in college go on to graduate. Many students have no choice but to work full-time in order to pay off their college education; preventing them from fully engaging in the course and studies. The majority of leaders and educators state that the primary key to solving our underlying social problems is education. They have touted themselves as leaders of educators, helping society and the younger generation surpass, yet they’ve done nothing to encourage the pursuit. 1 in 6 American students owns money for federal student loans, stirring stress and confusion for themselves in the future. With the forgiveness of student loans, most future adults are able to obtain cars and get houses, and jobs. If our educated leader pursues that stigmatized idea of education being the sole primary way to obtain money and success, then student debt will not be solved. $1.6 trillion of student debt is already at play. No change or course of action will bring hardships to the economy. Those superior believe it is the only means to success, to have a wealthy and stable future.

As we begin to figure out what universities we want to go to and feel renewed and fresh right out of high school, we have that burden of having to go to college not because we want to but because society stigmatized it as a have-to-in order to do well in life. Finishing school and obtaining a college degree is not guaranteed success although some might state otherwise. Attending college became a socially demanding pathway for generations of students and the value of a degree is decreasing within them. Student loans and opportunity costs outweigh the benefits. It is becoming more expensive each year and you must have mortgaged your life effectively to pay the price of a certificate. Most of the time people head into college with the mentality of following their dream path and goals. They believe it’ll be easy finding their dream job and obtain a lot of money quickly upon graduating. Nevertheless, attending college does not guarantee the spot in life they want to be in, except for debt if they aren’t able to afford it. College forces many students to take out student loans, affecting their future. Many students are taking classes that they do not need and quickly go into debt just because their job required them to do so. In the past, it was much easier to obtain a certain job with one to no degree.

It brings many students into debt making their financial future harder to keep stable. Students cannot afford to take many classes they do not need; they primarily need the classes that will help them go further into their careers. College states that it is preparing us for the modern world and our future, but if students are taking college forcefully just because society stigmatizes it as the only way to be wealthy, nobody will come prepared. A college degree is not a stepping stone anymore to having a successful life. Less than 30% of graduates leave campus with a stable job and a foot in the door for their future goals, leaving a staggering 70% buried in debt. Believing in high school that obtaining that degree will leave us have a better job and a brighter future left us unknown of what financial stability we were planning on having upon going to college. That mentality heading into college begins to substantially decrease leaving debt into killing dreams.

Helping the students will benefit the economy if student debt were forgiven. An article, Student Loan Debt Should Be Forgiven to Stimulate the Economy states “Forgiving student loan debt would have an immediate stimulating effect on the economy. Responsible people who did nothing other than pursue higher education would have hundreds, if not thousands of extra dollars per month to spend, fueling the economy now. Those extra dollars being pumped into the economy would have a multiplying effect, unlike many of the provisions of the new stimulus package. As a result, tax revenues would go up, the credit markets will unfreeze, and jobs will be created. Consumer spending accounts for over two-thirds of the entire U.S. economy and in recent months, consumer spending has declined at alarming, unprecedented rates. Therefore, it stands to reason that the fastest way to revive our ailing economy is to do something drastic to get consumers to spend.” Rather than backlash at the economy, student debt should be forgiven. Without many students obtaining jobs and houses, brings the economic status is low, making it harder for money to come in. A well-educated workforce benefits societies’ playground of means for success. This crisis is constantly being played for those with student debts whose repayment schedules span out for decades with large amounts of payment yet to be given. It is also a crisis for our economy affecting houses, cars, appliances, furniture, and many more sales that students and adults simply don’t have the money for. The article Student Loan Debt Should Be Forgiven to Stimulate the Economy discusses how the proposals to free up money for hardworking and educated Americans will give them more money to spend to stabilize the economy. They go on further to state how “…could it help millions of hardworking people who struggle every month to get by? Absolutely. Given the current economic climate, as well as the plans to spend trillions of additional dollars that are in the works, one must wonder what is so objectionable about giving a real helping hand to real people with real struggles.” Bernie Sanders is constantly trying to aid the end of student loans. America is drowning in student debt. He believes that “ Four-year public colleges and community colleges should be free – including tuition and fees – for everyone, Federal student loan interest rates should be lower, and the federal government should not make a profit on student loans, and Student loan refinancing should be revamped to help save money for more borrowers.” stated in Forbes. Bringing down student debt can help create a more stable economy and future for students. As well as being able to obtain and create more jobs rather than go to minimal-paying jobs that are not related to their degree.

This generation needs the motivation to continue in their careers. Nowadays it seems as if there were forced to go. They go into college unwillingly and headfirst into the trap of debt. Many students diminish the quality of the community in a classroom. They are not willing to further their skills in class and are unable to willingly operate effectively within their social environment. They are aloof and detached from their work and students are heading into their future careers underprepared with no sense of how to communicate with their peers, supervisors, and interviewers. Giving them more opportunities can help create a stable environment in schools. Many students have to forgo grad school because they simply cannot afford it. The average undergrad students already start to accumulate roughly around $30,000 of debt. With students realizing that student debt will still follow them regardless, they’re stuck in a constant loop of having to go through school to just obtain a decent job.

Some countries have free colleges such as Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. A college degree is a pathway to a more stable life both financially and economically. With more students in college, those graduates statistically smoke less, commit fewer crimes, and generate more taxes. Lower-income families would be able to reach graduation if there was no tuition. Many students drop out due to an unstable financial situation there living in. Getting rid of tuition helps eliminate their primary reasons for not finishing. With a push for free college, students will have the liberty to choose a major they enjoy and classes they enjoy rather than classes that are premature but a necessity to take for a good future. Having interest and enjoyment in the field of study there trying to pursue helps them stick to their goals and their education rather than it burns out on them with more people will also be able to go to college. It helps create an educated workforce and the population of critical thinkers using interpersonal skills creates innovation in society. Student debt will not strike down students and won’t crush their dreams. Students from other countries don’t have tuition and without that weight of loans there able to rent things and have luxuries such as houses and better jobs. Contributing to society. Free college is a push, a push society needs to take upon to help those less fortunate and middle class be able to graduate.

The burden of financing a college education is more costly to students. The financial stress put on them is a waking nightmare for themselves and their families, the exorbitant prices for student debt are at an all-time high and the pursuit of free college will benefit the economy and future generations of students. It can help break the cycle and earn their degrees.

As most of you know my name is Clark Kien Landau and today, I want to tell you something about me that you might not know. I`m not really student council material (though you guys already know this) but I want to help the school become a better place and enhance my skills and that`s why I decided to run for the student council secretary. From the time I was three years old or four maybe, I’ve learned to write. I think that’s pretty early for a kid right? During my high school years every night when I got home from school, I picked up my pen and notebook and I relieved any stress from the day by writing how my days went and doing some doodles.

Let’s go to the exciting part of why you should vote for me. First and foremost I am a dedicated student. I may not be student council material but I will wholeheartedly contribute time and effort to the student council. In my free time at school (in between periods or during my lunch), I update the class record on what was going on. During meetings, the secretary must keep a record of the minutes, which means they must write or take notes on what was said.

The secretary must also keep the records confidential. I am extremely organized and would make every effort to avoid losing any papers or completed work, and I am also a reliable and trustworthy individual. I believe myself to be a team player as well. I participate in some sports and help in a variety of ways. I enjoy collaborating with others, despite the fact that I may not appear to do so. Giving and receiving ideas is beneficial. We can come up with fantastic ideas to assist the school and community if we work together.

Student council is a fantastic chance to become active, as well as meet and work with new individuals. I have two years of experience as a class secretary, therefore I am prepared for any challenge and ready to work. I am ready to help our community. I would really enjoy being our student council secretary. If there is a problem that needs to be resolved, I will not give up until we find a solution. I’ll bring your issues to the attention of the other council members, and, like learning to write, I’ll stick with that issue until we find a solution. And don`t forget to Take note, and vote right! Vote Clark!

Are following instructions really important?

There is a growing feeling that something is wrong with the global education system. And it is proven that the education system is failing. And why is it actually failing? Well, parents are sending their children to school, so they can be prepared for the real world which nowadays is changing very, very fast but our schools haven’t changed much for hundreds of years. And I can bravely say, that the education system has got a lot of problems. One of them is Industrial age values. All day long students do nothing but follow instructions. “Sit down”; “Take out your books”; “Turn to page 69”; “Stop talking”. At school, you are rewarded for doing exactly what you are told. These are industrial-age values that were really important for factory workers. Their success depended on following instructions and doing exactly what they were told to do. But in today’s world, how far can you go by simply following instructions? The modern world values people who can think outside of the box, people who are curious, and people who can collaborate with others.

Another problem is the lack of autonomy and control. At school, the students experience a complete lack of autonomy and control. Every minute of a student’s life is tightly controlled by the system. In today’s world, you are managing your own time. But life at school looks very different. The system is sending a dangerous message to its students that they are not in charge of their own lives. Experts such as Dan Pink and Peter Gray believe that autonomy is incredibly important for students.

There is something else as well. A major problem is known as inauthentic learning. Most of the learning that happens in schools today is not authentic, because it relies on memorization and rote learning. Every few months we are measured on how much of the material we have maintained. Such learning is not authentic, because most of it is gone two days after the exam. But it seems like that is the only thing we measure and test scores are the only thing we value. This has created an extremely unhealthy culture for students, parents, and teachers. Children are staying up all night memorizing useless facts that they will forget very soon.

I am sure that all of us have got a passion for something, but as a student, you haven’t got much spare time for your favorite hobby. This is another problem I would like to talk about. Let’s call it “No room for passion and interests”. We have an extremely standardized system where every student has to learn the same thing in the exact same way as everyone else. This in my opinion doesn’t respect the basic fact of being human. Each of us is a unique and different human being in our own way. We all have different passions and interests. But do the schools help their students find their passion and develop it? NO! There seems to have no room in the current system for the most important questions in a child’s life. “What am I good at”; “How do I fit in this world?” The system doesn’t seem to give a damn about it. There are so many great people who failed in the traditional school system. Fortunately, they have managed to overcome these failures, but not everyone can. The school system doesn’t have an idea how many students it failed.

And as I have already said, each of us is different in our own way and this affects the way we learn. So, I would like to talk about the differences in how we learn. Each of us is also different in how we learn, how much time we take to learn something, and what tools work best for us. But unfortunately, the system doesn’t have room for such differences. So, if someone is a bit slow in learning something, he’s considered a failure, and let’s don’t forget the fact that the students are at different levels of understanding. Now, whatever the teacher does, there’s bound to be students, who are either bored, because they are ahead or confused because they are behind. Because of internet and the digital media, we have students have all of the information in the world at their fingertips. Technology has made it possible for anyone to learn anything. But the school system does not leverage these incredible resources for fear of losing control.

Another major problem is the fact that the school values efficiency over mastery and promotes an incomplete understanding of the subject material. The current education system operates as a factory. Students have a certain amount of time to get graded and they are either good products or bad products. The system moves students along after a certain period of time and not when they have fully mastered the current subject matter. In Sal Khan’s book called The One World Schoolhouse, he refers to this as Swiss cheese learning. Students are allowed to pass the next year’s subject if they obtain a grade of at least 50%. That means that there is over 50% of the material they don’t understand. Eventually, all these holes will catch up to them and they will hit a point, where the material stops making sense. The analogy Sal uses is that of a house. You wouldn’t build a house on a weak foundation, would you? But The education system is constantly doing this to us, the students, by pushing us ahead regardless of our mastery over a topic. Again, the current school system is like a factory. It values quantity over quality. The world is evolving so rapidly that older institutions can’t keep up. But we are starting to see a shift in the education system. Here are some of my views on the future of education. Education will likely be digital, automated, and highly personalized for the individual. It will also be cheaper than ever before. We are already starting to see these things emerge with the birth of educational YouTube channels and the increasing quality of online courses. Universities are starting to put some of their notes online. Some are even starting to host massive online courses online. In the future students will reward the best educators with their attention and money and educators will start to compete to be the best. As a result, we will see an increase in the quality of education students get. And with no doubt, the road will be a difficult one. The roots of our current system run deep; the infrastructure is already there, meanwhile, the infrastructure for the future of education is still in its infancy. The online education system still doesn’t have the prestige that the traditional has although this model is shifting as well, no one’s going to hire a doctor or a lawyer who learned everything online, but they would hire a programmer, video editor, graphic designer, digital marketer, an animator or writer who learned everything online. And here is one final note that I would like to conclude on Human curiosity is very hard to kill. We are naturally very curious beings. And you can see that by analyzing little kids and seeing how they interact with the world around them. They are fascinated and they want to know how it all works and fits together. This is human nature. We can see that the current system is starting to show its age, because somehow miraculously it is putting out the flames of human curiosity in our youth. Young kids are seeing education as a chore and I think that most of us will agree that the current is outdated and will leave many students unprepared for a rapidly changing future. For them, I already feel sad. Although there’s still a lot of work to be done, I am quite optimistic about the future of our education. I am truly excited to see a world where we can bring back a system of education that allows students to find and use their natural talents to make the world around them a better place instead of having their natural curiosity… snuffed out.

[Opening]Don’t let your child lose on the starting line, although it sounds like prophetic advertising, it is regarded as the supreme truth by most Chinese parents, and it aggravated the parents’ anxiety. [Background] The underlying reason is that these academic elites have adapted to a structured environment (school), but the real society is highly unstructured. Excellent performance in one environment, but not necessarily in another environment, or even the opposite. School is a structured environment with selective bias because it likes students who respond more quickly to specific tasks in this environment; schools like to engage in academic competition but sacrifice students’ abilities outside the campus. For example, the ability to discover opportunities, create opportunities, and take advantage of opportunities. However, students that are not doing well in academics learned the ability to discover opportunities and use opportunities at an early age. [Thesis statement] In general, most people consider whether students are good or bad through competition or rank level (grade) in education.

[Main idea] In fact, parents and teachers have been designing competitive tools intentionally and unintentionally to give their children a driving force, or through the ‘honorary reward’ to give the child self-confidence, and hope child could do better in the future. [Support] Some people may say that this is encouraging and not competitive at all. But when people give their child the honor of ‘smart, best, talent, genius’, they also give the child pressure that he can not lose this honor. If someone else performs better than him, he will compete, protect or recapture the honor that once belongs to him. Also for a rewarded student, rewards would make students happy, but this happiness lasts for a short time, and for a longer period of time, the student is nervous and anxious because he must face many other students’ competition and try hard to defend his honor. [Conclusion] The students who have adapted to a deterministic task (such as subject learning, exams, etc.) will be labeled as “good students”.

[Main idea] Losing in the competition can often lead to emotionalization.[Support] In order to get rid of and compensate for this emotion, some students will mock, ridicule, sarcasm, and bully others. Also, In order to compensate for the inferiority and loss in the competition, some will look for external achievements. By replacing the honor with violence, smoking, drinking, and rebuilding confidence with the vanity brought by showing off. The inner core of the competitive loser is extremely empty, and it is urgent to require the approval of others to fill the huge void. When reaching a tipping point that the pain caused by competition is far greater than the happiness it brings. Many distorted thoughts and behaviors are actually for the purpose to get rid of the pain caused by competition, and many students are struggling with it for a long time. [Conclusion] Excessive failures can greatly hurt students’ self-esteem, especially when their minds are still immature, they are labeled as bad students, and they will consider themselves also as bad students even after they graduate.

[Main idea] However, some “bad students” learn to deal with uncertainty, such as criticism from teachers and parents, and changes in the environment. [Support] In this process, they learn to be motivated and their mental capacity is exercised. They are more exposed to society and look for opportunities in uncertainty, such as discovering opportunities and taking advantage of opportunities. They have to make more attempts, which is a must for survival. Therefore, they have more opportunities to discover their own strengths and keep getting refined and profitable in the process of applying their strengths. [Conclusion] These so-called bad students will also encounter many failures, but the failure is affordable, they can stand up and learn something from it. In such frequent attempts, sometimes they encounter big opportunities and make correct judgments, and grasp them to succeed.

[Main idea] In a changing society, including extreme situations such as war, social unrest, technological revolution, and commercial warfare, elite students who are highly accustomed to certain tasks are vulnerable. [Support] Those who have trained the ability to deal with uncertainty, it is difficult to say that they are strong, they have mastered the rules of survival. Good students and bad students are not antagonistic. The so-called good and bad are superficial. [Conclusion] The quality of academic performance is not necessarily related to career achievements.

[Main idea] From the perspective of evolution, competition existed hundreds of millions of years ago, much earlier than human birth, so when people bring their children into this world, it has already involved them in various competitions. [Support] Competition will inevitably lead to a sense of crisis and anxiety, but ignoring competition does not avoid competition, just as ignoring death can not avoid death. People should not pay too much attention to the performance of the moment but pay more attention to whether students can get more fun and curiosity from learning and exploration. Also, people should care more about whether children can get happiness from self-control and whether they can grow from themselves. [Conclusion] We could also let children participate in the competition, but the purpose is not to prove that he is stronger than others but to test how much we have grown up, and where the weak places that we had.

[Conclusion and social significance] Both educators and students should realize that life does not win or lose, and life is exploration. On this basis, we will accept competitive psychology, clearly, understand the possible side effects of competition, and try to use competition as a means of growth rather than a source of the driving force.

Why is it so valuable and beneficial to be an international student? Many people have different opinions surrounding this topic however, it is for these reasons that being an overseas student is such a valued opportunity. These include life experiences such as learning different cultures whilst exploring the world and making life-long friends you will always remember. Boost your self-confidence and self-development including figuring out your strengths and weaknesses and growing as an individual. Finally, being self-motivated, dependent, and able to cope with difficult situations is a great way to enhance your employment opportunities for future work possibilities.

The lifestyle and social differences around cultures force students to push their social skills out of their comfort zones in order to have assistance from teachers, gain social adaptability with peers, and make friends. In addition to how rewarding your friendships may be, they could provide you with essential networking tools down the road. As a result, be more intrigued in classes and eager to gain knowledge in their circumstances. In an international classroom, everyone is joined together to be able to have that experience with different cultures and develop new perspectives of cross-cultural awareness. By being an international student in your classroom or work you will be more comfortable with different backgrounds and be able to establish a stronger relationship with them due to this. Another reason is that you have the lifetime opportunity to travel the world and go to places you would never think you will be at. Being in places and getting to know different people who have different ways of living helps becoming familiar with the urban environment around you. Students coming from international countries are able to enjoy their time to explore the world and learn at the same time. The ability to travel and gain knowledge from different cultures and chances to learn from various aspects of the world is so very much significant and valuable, as well as a fortunate advantage to have for all overseas students.

Secondly, self-confidence and self-development are important factors of being an international student. There is nothing like being alone in a foreign country. Being immersed in an entirely new sense of culture setting can be daunting, but also provides an opportunity to discover strengths and weaknesses. For instance, students will come across communication problems when talking to a native speaker in a social background, however, by being able to speak a foreign language to them such as English, they are able to speak with self-confidence in their language. Not to mention you will be able to speak and learn the language much faster as it is practiced regularly and pick up the native language you wouldn’t learn in class. According to statistics conveyed on the negative effects on international students’ social relationships, 40 percent were due to language difficulties with other students. While learning about a new culture, you also discover something about yourself, by testing your ability to adapt to a situation while solving a problem.

Finally, the ability to be self-motivated, dependent, and able to cope with different situations is an important reason why being an international student is beneficial. According to a recent Erasmus Impact study survey, 64 percent of employees consider overseas abroad experiences to be important, and 92 percent of employees look for transferable skills which are gained from these experiences, such as facing challenges. Also, young people who study abroad are half as likely to face long-term unemployment as those who do not study abroad. “Students who study abroad offer more to the workplace than those who don’t”, Lombardi says. “They offer a fuller package than just a student who’s looked at how things are theoretically, as opposed to students who have the opportunity to apply the concepts in their studies to real jobs and experiences across various cultures”. Students who look for jobs by handing in resumes have much higher job chances rather than normal local students. The employer expects your capability to perform well in difficult situations, performing well for the job. Not to mention being given priority over other people who apply due to their experiences. In addition, being able to negotiate with other cultures and be able to speak foreign languages fluently will set the applicant apart from other job applications.

In conclusion, being an international student has many benefits and is a valuable experience. Students gain lifetime experiences through learning about different cultures and exploring the world beyond. Able to self-improve and self-development through strengths and weaknesses. And not to mention have a much higher employment opportunity and job employment rate.

What exactly are the right characteristics, that one must have, in order for society to approve of them? Who is responsible for approving the wanted characteristics for the most part of their lives, when the youth struggle for individuality? Doing this, results in them subconsciously conforming to the social norms, set by pre-existing values and standards of society. Émile Durkheim was the first to explore stigma as a social factor in 1895. He and Ervin Goffman described people, who do not conform to social norms, as deviants (Herman, 1995, para.1). The different types of social stigma deeply affect students in negative ways.

Firstly, social stigma can be described as a deeply ‘discrediting’, disapproving or even discriminating attitude against a person based on perceivable social characteristics, that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society (Frost, 2011, p.3). Social stigma has many faces that cause drastic and unpredictable effects. Suicide is a main effect, as it is seen as a negative ‘solution’. When people are stigmatized, they feel devalued and worthless. Therefore, they lose the will to live and attempt to or commit suicide. When people commit suicide, they are usually blamed for it. Yet, nobody thinks about investigating the layout of the victim’s environment. Less often do people investigate what contributions the family, friends and society have done to cause such a devastating life decision. Carney and Merrell (2001, p.364-382) comment that, “Society commonly uses the person blame approach system whereby an individual is blamed for their own downfall”. Society fails to look at it from the perspective of the victim and what exactly drove them to do it. A superb example are university students. The work load assigned to students crushes them into depression and stress. Bullying adds to the pile of concerns. The victims do not talk about it due to the fear of embarrassment. Bullies would deny the accusations due to fear of expulsion. Many students lose understanding of their courses and seek help from their fellow classmates. Instead of receiving motivating advice from their friends, students are scolded for choosing a course they do not understand. Evidence suggests that, women are three times more likely to attempt suicide and experience stigma than men (Weiten, 2011, p.590). Studies have shown that people who are stigmatized or bullied have higher chances of developing an aggressive behavior.

Secondly, physical deformities, which include extremes of height, weight, albinism and facial disfigurement (Biernat and Dovidio, 2000, p.88-125), are also factors of appearance, that people are judged upon and judge with. At universities, it is common to view physically thin people as beautiful and popular, whilst fat people are outcasts and victims of bullying. Some victims might turn to drastic measures to become part of the group and no longer be easily targeted victims. This is where eating disorders surface among students. In this case, you are discouraged to be who you want to be and it also becomes difficult to present yourself as an individual and gain confidence. Social stigma may be a cause of depression, which leads to lower marks and may result in a student not graduating. At university, when students constantly stigmatize against one another, they tend to fall into depression, which is described as the “persistent feeling of sadness and despair and a loss of interest in previous sources of pleasure” (Weiten, 2011, p.587). Depression has many negative impacts on a person’s health. Students at university tend to feel like complete outsiders when they are in the presence of their peers. This causes them to behave and act in ways, that are completely different from the way they normally act, just to gain approval. Thus, causing them to feel alone and isolated. Therefore, the self-fulfilling prophecy is activated and students start to believe all the discriminating things, said about them. They also start to feel, believe and act as expected by the society. According to psychology examples, when a child is constantly told their smart, they tend to believe it and behave accordingly (Weiten, 2011, p.534).

In addition, stigma prevents students from playing an active role at university and in the society at large. Social stigma reduces self-esteem and with low self-esteem, students isolate themselves, keeping all their ideas to themselves. For example, during a lesson, a student with low self-esteem, will rarely participate due to the fact that they do not believe their ideas to be good enough and as a result, will be stigmatized by the majority of the class.

For example, in developing countries, like Namibia, many new and creative ideas of the youth, to lead the country to economic prosperity are ignored. If the youth are the future leaders of this country, then they need to be active members of the society. How are they expected to lead a country with every judgement passed onto them? It is very difficult, for an individual, to come out and share the knowledge they have, when they are constantly looked down upon or when others doubt them and their abilities. These prejudices, caused by the stigma, may even prevent students from coming forward and seeking help. With mental social stigma, we have the fear or impression, that people with mental illnesses, are violent. This results in society avoiding interaction with them. The moment someone is under the impression they are a threat to the society, it affects them to such an extent, they may also start to fear society. Addictions and substance abuse is believed by students to be ‘cool’ and a way to fit in. Some students, however, use alcohol and drugs as a gateway, to forget all the stigma against them. People are likely to engage into unwise patterns of using drugs and alcohol consumption, as a behavioral response to stigma (Weiten, 2011, p.548).

Also, homophobia has negative beliefs and discrimination of people based on their sexual orientation. This affects people, who are identified as gay and bisexual. The negative attitudes increase the chances of experiencing more violence, compared to other students. Homosexuality is still a taboo in many African countries. The most common excuse being, it’s against culture. Namibia is yet to legalize homosexuality; therefore, it can be a contributing factor to the social stigma especially in universities where the students are exposed to many things.

Lastly, tribal stigma is concerned with the aspect of gender. It is passed down genetically. Social stigma is very traumatizing, so students should take in consideration not to fall victim of it at all, rather than try to avoid it or fight against it, because at the end of the day it just causes harm to them. Students should be able to open up with others in order to fight stigma. Interacting with fellow students saves you from feeling neglected and other people will be able to accept you for who you are and not judge you for any reason. Learn to accept yourself and not change yourself in order to impress people around you. It is a need to launch campaigns at educational institutions and social organizations to speak out against stigma and also help students who feel they face stigma in their environment.

University education is an important milestone in the life of a person who has had the privilege of going through one. The purpose of university education is to train the mind to learn to think and develop virtues that will prepare you for life. University education is essentially the last step a person takes before venturing into their prospective careers. University education gives a person the necessary skills and knowledge so that he/she will be ready for employment or self-employment and to build their potential careers.

There exist many aspects a student will encounter during his/her stay in the university. Some of these aspects include the faculty, the staff, fellow students and outside community. These relationships formed during the university will have an impact in the professional and social life a person will have after completing the university program. The professional life is the main occupation that a person will work in order to get income while the social life involves the interaction of the people you will live within the society. In order to succeed in the university and later in life, a student should be able to handle and use all these aspects to put them to good use by building healthy and positive relationships with the faculty, fellow students, staff and the community which will lead to having a fruitful university experience.

Student Relationship with Fellow Students

During the classroom and after the class sessions in the school, students get a chance to interact with each other. These interactions can come in the form of seeing one another in class, asking questions to one another about the courses you are undertaking and even discussing affairs that are not related to the courses you are learning. These interactions are important as students are able to build friendships and look for people who they have something in common with in the university. Some of the friendships formed can result in strong bonds among students that last beyond their university education. The friends that you will find will probably have an effect over your behaviors and how a student conduct himself/herself while in school. Students’ relationships with friends shape the amounts of time they spend in the content of what they have come to learn in the university. Students can spend time with their friends through studying together, group projects, engaging in clubs and recreational activities. Good friends are those that will let you spend more time with the content of what you are seeking for in school while the bad friends are those that will make you unfocused on the personal goals that you had when joining the school. The bad friends will bring more insignificance to your life rather than bring more value in your life. Therefore, it is important for students to look for good friends who will let you follow your goals and can actually assist you in meeting your educational goals.

Aside from having friendships, interactions in the schools could be as a result of class activities such as group projects where you are required to work with diverse people. More and more lecturers of large classes are introducing some form of small-group learning activities to the course (Kinsella, Mahon & Lillis, 2017). These group projects are made to prepare students to respond to situations in work places where you have to work in teams in order to complete tasks. Group works is also meant to gauge students on how capable they are in working with other people to achieve an objective. Universities are appreciating the value that having group projects as it has a plethora of benefits for learners from enhanced discipline-specific knowledge and communication skills to increased motivation to devote additional time to studying, alongside greater enjoyment of the class (Kinsella, Mahon & Lillis, 2017).

Students can build networks with their fellow students during their interactions. Networking is a good way to connect with other people in your field to get opportunities for yourself after completing your university education. Network connections can help in advising a student on what to do and what not to do when it comes to your potential career (West, 2016).

Student Relationship with the Faculty

The faculty is the scholarly staff at universities that are concerned with the division of knowledge. The faculty’s main mandate is to impart education to the students in the university. The faculty differ from the staff as the staff is mainly engaged in administrative functions. The faculty consists of professors, lecturers and teachers. The faculty is a key component in the university. Lecturers will disseminate knowledge, information and the relevant skills to students during class sessions. The lecturers are also responsible in grading the students and gauging their capabilities and the level of knowledge they have required through giving out tests and examinations to students to see the level of the content the student has acquired. Lecturers have a key role in guiding you during your coursework. Students and the faculty have a somewhat compulsory relationship with one another because the students and lecturers will have to engage with one another during class sessions and test examinations. Therefore, it is necessary for a student to try his/her best to build a good relationship with the school faculty because of the weight of the importance that the faculty have over your ambitions of acquiring a degree, masters or doctorate. Positive relationships with teachers contribute to commitment, effort, motivation, satisfaction, achievement and intellectual development (Hagenaur & Volet, 2014). Hagenaur and Volet also suggested that positive relations between the students and teachers could prevent the student from dropping out of school due to “connectedness” between the tutor and the student.

The relationship between the student and the faculty is rather confusing. This is because in the university, the faculty is required to share the knowledge to the students. So, there is a doubt whether the relationship should be subordinate like the ‘teacher teaches student’ relationship as experienced in primary school and high school or treat the students as peers and independent thinkers who want a share of the knowledge the professor or lecturer has. Students respond to informal interaction more than just formal interaction (Endo & Harpel, 1982). Therefore, it is important for the student to build a healthy learning relationship with the faculty to get knowledge and support so as to make the learning exercise as beneficial as possible. Students are required to attend sessions in classes where they would get knowledge and information from the lecturers and apply them as skills to use in their lives.

On the value of the relationship between the student and the faculty, the student will acquire the necessary skills to pursue their career aspirations. A pharmacy student will learn from faculty how medicines work, how to measure the right amount of medicine needed and how to manage diseases and disorders. The faculty can also provide referrals for students whenever they are faculty can give a student a plus when they are applying for job opportunities.

Student Relationship with the Support Staff

Aside from the faculty, students should endeavor to create healthy relationships with other members of the support staff. It should be remembered that the university does not only revolve only around the classrooms between the students and faculty. There exist other departments that also play a big role in the student’s university experience. If universities and colleges of higher education are deficient in providing support to their students, then it does not serve the purpose of education, but only distribution of degrees (Kaur, 2016). The school staff is the administrative staff of the school and are in charge of running different activities that are geared towards improving the student’s university experience. They serve as the interface between the institution and the learner. Some of the members of the staff include the dean, the library staff, the registrar, sports directors, the cafeteria, finance offices and also includes lecturers.

The work of the school staff helps to enhance the students learning experience in the school. The relationship between the staff and the students is based on service. The staff provides the service to the student to make his/her university education. For example, the library avails a wide variety of books and other learning materials to the students for their references and studying. The library will purchase the books and the cataloguing and records department will prepare the book by placing serial numbers and identities on them then record them on the school library record book before arranging the to the shelves in the order of the courses they are related to.

The service aspect is important to the students to show them how different departments work indifferent lines of work but are ultimately working for the same goal which is to improve the university experience for the student. In their professional lives, students will be required to perform work and services that are in line with the goals of the employer or company they are working with. Also, students will appreciate the value of working together in different specializations for the benefit of one cause.

Aside from just giving service to students to better their learning exercise, the staff can serve as an example to students of how they would provide services to people in their career aspirations. The support staff is an example of how different departments engage in different works but ultimately work for the same goal that is providing a conducive learning environment for the student. Therefore, it is important for the students to recognize and appreciate the indirect work that the staff performs as the work is geared towards improving your university education learning experience. Also, the relationship between the students and the staff can reveal to the students how people conduct themselves in the work area as the support staff are usually employed individuals working for the school. Students can learn from the support staff what it takes to work in various offices and how to deliver your work and provide services to those who have approached you at the workplaces.

Student Relationship with the Community

The student should be aware of the community he/she encounters outside the school premises. The community outside the school is also another important facet of the school. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the community is a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. The community is where the students and staff live, where the school gets some of its amenities such as water. The outside environment is beyond the control of the school meaning the community is not subjected by the ideologies and objectives of the university but they still play a role in how the university is shaped up. Students should create a connection with the community surrounding the school and respond to providing assistance to the community whenever possible. As public administration is faced with the challenge of making governance work, the university is being called upon to become more involved in the civic engagement movement (D’Agostino, 2008). The public recognizes the value that a school can bring to the community, hence, students should step up and try to make their community a better place for the people to live in.

University education should be about creating responsible citizens rather than just careers. Students should recognize this so that they may be aware of the conditions facing the community and how they can provide assistance or make some changes to improve the lives of the people in the community. Universities have valuable resources like students, staff, faculty and expertise that become accessible to the community when partnerships address community needs (Bringle & Hatcher, 1996). The university should harness their resources to assist in improving the community they live in. In a way, this will prepare students to be responsible citizens who will work in their careers with the aim of serving the community they live in rather than just working for a source of income.

Some of the actions that students can take to build their relationships with the community is through working in community group projects, working in clubs to find methods of assisting the community and community service learning. Programs concerning the community will help students in developing problem solving skills because of the interactions they will have with the people in the community by discovering where you can provide assistance in. Building relationship with the community also gives a chance for students to practice their academic lessons outside the classroom and onto real-life situations. These relationships bring context to why a student is studying and whether his/her career aspirations can have a positive impact on the community he/she lives in.

Conclusion

University education is aimed at creating capable professionals to the world who are able to apply the skills and knowledge they possess in trying to create a better world for themselves and for the community. A student should be able to utilize the facets namely the faculty, fellow student, the staff and the community effectively in order to meet their university educational purposes.

The effective utilization is made by building positive and healthy relations with the different facets as has been written throughout the paper. Once the student has been able to build the relationships, they will now be ready to face the demanding situations that will be experienced during their professional and social life successfully.

Education entails the process that instils skills, knowledge, and production capabilities in the labour force, and it is an important component which influences the pace and character of social, economic development of a nation. UNESCO (2005) stipulated that the educational status of individuals in a country tends to be a key indicator of its level of development. Globally, the provision of education is a basic human right. Additionally, education is globally considered as a form of investment in human capital development, which results to economic benefits, especially by enhancing the productive capacity of a country (Zhou et al., 2016). As a way of empowering young individuals, most parents and guardians have focused on investing heavily on education. This is one of the reasons why the rate of enrolment and tertiary institutions in Australia and other parts of the world have been on the increase. However, the attainment of universal participation in education will rely on the quality of education being deliverable in all levels of education. More importantly, the delivery of quality education in tertiary institutions ought to be paramount. For this reason, if there are some aspects which jeopardize the provision of quality education, they need to be address and dealt with earlier in advance.

Purpose of this Report

The report focuses on the analysis of various factors which affects the provision of quality education at the University of Sydney. Additionally, objectives of meeting the identified factors by 2020 have also been discussed. Promotional mix elements, metrics of assessing the objectives at the end of 2020 as well as budgetary requirements have also been identified and described.

Factors Affecting the Quality Education Delivery at the University of Sydney

Physical Facilities

The construction and maintenance of physical facilities tertiary institutions by sponsors, government, communities play a fundamental role in as far as the delivery of quality education is concerned. The physical resources which influence the delivery of quality education are not limited to administration blocks, lecture halls, lecture theatres, libraries, auditoriums, workshops, toilets, students` hostels, workshops, support staffs, laboratories among others (Edirisinghe et al., 2016). Lack of or inadequacy of these facilities interferes with effective learning processes. The quality of buildings at the universities are also related to other quality issues such as the working conditions for lecturers and students, the presence of adequate textbooks and instructional materials among others (Kweon et al., 2017). For example, modern lecture halls need to be equipped with materials and equipment that facilitates the teaching processes, such as the projector, adequate space, chalkboards and others (Needham et al., 2017). Libraries play a fundamental role in as far as the learning of students is concerned. Lecturers deliver only 25 percent of the contents, and it is the role of the student to gather the other 75 percent, especially through reading deeper about the contents in various textbooks in the library (Lamers et al., 2016).

High Admission Rate of Students

The Australian higher education body rarely considers the number of students it admits at the University of Sydney. What happens is that more students are admitted to the institution more than it can manage to serve (Norton & Zhang, 2018). In addition to the high number of students who are allocated by the higher education board, the University of Sydney admits more on the self-sponsored basis to gain revenues since they tend to pay more in terms of tuition fees per semester compared to the government-sponsored students. In the long run, the pressure of university resources such as student hostels, libraries, lecture halls, computer laboratories, and numerous others tends to be high. Besides this pressure, the student-teacher ratio ends up being higher than what is recommended, and this compromises the personal attention that a lecturer should give to the students (Williams & Reddy, 2016). The student-teacher ratio entails the number of students admitted to an educational institution divided by the number of lecturers (Martin & Collie, 2018). When the student-teacher ratio is high, it becomes impossible for the teacher to know the individual student`s better, and this limits the former`s capacity of identifying areas where the student may need educational assistance.

Teaching Methodologies

The method of teaching that lecturers embrace determines the quality of education being delivered to the students. There are three major teaching strategies, which are not limited to cognitive activation, active learning, and teacher-directed instruction (Hinostroza et al., 2016). Cognitive activation strategy entails the aspect of challenging students to not only inspire them but also to stimulate high order skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Active learning strategies entail the aspect of enhancing the engagement of students in their own learning (Barrow et al., 2007). It encompasses the use of various practices such as student self-assessment, the use of information and technology, and group work. Teacher directed strategies entail practices where the teacher is the main actor who is responsible for dictating skills and knowledge to the students, who tends to be the receptive (Lama & Joullié, 2015). Some of these practices are repetition, memorization, and dictating or lecturing. Teacher directed teaching strategy is the frequently used strategy not only at the University of Sydney but in numerous universities across the globe. This strategy has been a culture that most university lecturers adopt and implement for years (Ellis, 2018). Teachers talk, collaborate, and discuss their teaching practices, and this means that it is not uncommon to find out that lecturers from the same university teach the same way.

Lack of Professional Development Among the Teaching Staffs

Teachers play a fundamental role in as far as the delivery of quality education is concerned. Ensuring that lecturers have the necessary credentials of teaching is not enough to guarantee the delivery or provision of quality education at the universities (Zein, 2016). However, lecturers need to be placed at the center of education and teaching practices is a major milestone in advancing dialogues and securing policy attention. Research shows that provision of quality professional development of the teaching staffs can enhance lecturers teaching practices in a positive way, which in the long run would impact the learning of students and enhance the quality of education (Egert, Fukkink & Eckhardt, 2018). The way lecturers are prepared for teaching is among the major critical indicators of education quality (Barrow et al., 2007). Providing regular professional development of lecturers will equip them with skills and knowledge of not only effective teaching practices but also working collaborative amongst themselves, students, parents and members of the community (Lander et al., 2017). It is unfortunate that most lecturers at the University of Sydney believe that they are the main actors in the teaching process, and their directives should not be questioned by the receptive students.

Class Size and Quality of Education

The size of classes impacts academic performance and contributes to the creation of a vicious cycle (Zhou et al., 2016). Smaller class sizes are considered effective in allowing lecturers to take less time in class management, spend more time with each student, and more importantly, providing better instruction tailored to individual needs of the student, which in the long run contributes to better performances (Hu, 2015). Additionally, class size contributes to the amount of attention and time that a lecturer can give to individual students and the social dynamics among students. Large class sizes may favor some students, especially the quick learners, and be a challenge to the slow and disadvantaged students (Blazar, Kraft & Hogan, 2018). Considering that lecturers do not manage to have individual student`s attention in large class sizes, it means that the slow learning students will not manage to grasp everything that the lecturer teaches in class. Additionally, time tends to be a limiting factor when classes are large, especially since a lot of time is wasted during class management rather than in the actual teaching process (Glewwe & Muralidharan, 2016). At the University of Sydney, the classes are large to accommodate the large population of students at a time, and this means that the lecturers rarely manage to get immediate feedback from students as well as implementing effective and flexible questioning techniques.

Marketing Promotion Plan

Communication Objectives to Reflect and Achieve the Five Major Factors

1. To enhance the teaching methodologies by 2020. Lecturers will be equipped with modern teaching methodologies in the next six months in order to facilitate the delivery of quality education at the university. Precisely, cognitive activation and active learning strategies will be emphasized.
2. To reduce class size to a meaningful size by 2020. The class sizes will be reduced to such an extent that the maximum capacity is 100 students. This will be achieved during the next one year. Reducing the class sizes will enable lecturers to offer individualized student`s attention.
3. To offer regular and quality professional development of lecturers by 2020. Lecturers will be required to attend professional development workshops after every six months to enhance their teaching methods. This will enable them to teach skills and knowledge that are related to the challenges that the world is facing today.
4. To regulate the admission of students by 2020. The number of self-sponsored students that the University of Sydney will be enrolling besides or on top of those allocated by the Australian higher education board will be regulated in order to reduce the scramble of the available resources such as hostels and libraries.
5. To equip and improve the physical facilities by 2020. The physical facilities which facilitate the learning process within the university will be equipped and improved within the next one year to facilitate effective delivery of quality education. Lecture halls will be equipped with projectors and chairs, while libraries will be furnished with additional reading materials.

Promotional Mix Elements to Achieve the Objectives

1. Personal selling strategy. I will achieve this element by demonstrating to the university management how the teaching methodologies of lecturers fails to meet the needs in the outside world. This demonstration will take place at the board rooms or in the university`s amphitheater. I will demonstrate this in the next two months.
2. Sales promotion strategy. I will implement this element by convincing the other students concerning the importance of regulating the rate of admission of the self-sponsored students within the university. By doing so, I will manage to gather support and a louder voice that will make the university to consider our concerns.
3. Direct marketing strategy. I will implement this element by composing and sending emails to the dean of students and the vice-chancellor at the University of Sydney concerning the importance of holding workshops for professional development. I will be done this within the next one week.
4. Publicity. I will implement this element by using social media platforms to inform the university management how large sizes of class affect the education delivery. Precisely, I will use Facebook page and twitter to achieve this objective. By doing this, I will manage to raise awareness to the other students how large class sizes limits the delivery of quality education.
5. Advertising strategy. I will implement this element by advertising through the local television sets and social media platforms concerning the nature of the physical facilities within the University of Sydney and how they impact the delivery of quality education.

Criteria to Measure the Objectives at the End of 2020

1. Physical facilities: to push the management personnel at the University of Sydney to equip and improve the state of the physical facilities within the university. Promotional mix element – advertising strategy. The term is one year. The state of the physical facilities will be improved than before. For example, lecture halls will have projectors and libraries will have adequate reading materials.
2. Admission of students: to encourage the Higher Education Board of Australia to regulate the admission of self-sponsored students within the university. Promotional mix element – sales promotion strategy. The term is one year. By the end of 2020, the number of self-sponsored students being admitted at the university will be reduced. The pressure for university resources will be low.
3. Teaching methodologies: to sensitize the importance of adopting active learning and cognitive activation by the educators. Promotional mix element – personal selling strategy. The term is six months. Modern teaching methods which involve students as the main actors will have been adopted.
4. Provision of professional development to the lecturers: to encourage the university management to implement regular workshops for enhancing the teaching strategies of educators. Promotional mix element – direct marketing strategy. The term is six months. Regular workshops for enhancing professional development will be in place.
5. Class size: advocating for the reduction of class sizes. Promotional mix element – publicity. The term is one year. The size of classes will be reduced to standard sizes.

Description

By using the advertising strategy to raise awareness on how physical facilities hinders the delivery of quality education within the university, I may end up attracting sponsors who can come and help in equipping the learning facilities with reading materials. This may be done through donation of books, construction materials or even financial donations.

Budget

1. Physical facilities: $1500000/100*10 ($750,000 – construction of an additional hostel; $50,000 – equipping the library with reading materials. $25,000 – construction of lecture hall, renovating the existing ones.

2. Teaching methodologies: $75000/100*10 ($3,500-organizing for the workshops; $3,500-payment of professional who will be facilitating the delivery of professional development).

3. Class size: $1000000/100 *10 ($50,000 – construction of additional small sized lecture halls; $50,000-particioning of the existing lecture halls into standard class rooms).

4. Admission of students: $40000/100*10 ($3000 -regular monitoring of the enrollment of self-sponsored students; $1000 – board room meetings with the stakeholders involved).

5. Provision of professional development: $50000/100*10 ($2000 – conducting research to identify the existing gaps relating to the teaching methods; $1500 – holding workshops; $1500 – regular training of lecturers).

Description

Holding professional development workshops may encompass the integration of lecturers from other universities in Australia and beyond and demonstrating ways of ensuring that the students benefit from the teaching methods that the lecturers use. For example, the lecturers from the University of Sydney may tour some of the universities in the world which are known for the provision of quality education, such as the Harvard University. This exposure will enable them to learn new teaching methods which they can implement them within the university. By so doing, the lecturers will stop using the same teaching practices which portray them as the main actors and students as recipients. The amount allocated for enhancing of the physical facilities can also be reinforced by encouraging former students, sponsors, government, and community members to chip in and help in any way possible in making the physical facilities better in terms of supporting the learning process.

Conclusion

It is, evident that there exist many factors which affects the quality education delivery at the University of Sydney. The major factors identified are not limited to high rate of admission of students, large class sizes, poor teaching methodologies, lack of professional development among the educators and poor state of the physical facilities. This report has stipulated the objectives which the management of this university can implement to enhance the education quality. Additionally, the promotional mix elements have also been discussed, the measures of assessing the achievement of the said objectives by the end of 2020, and the budgetary and timeline requirements required.

References

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Suicide is a subject that is not talk about often. Suicide does not only affect adults, but it affects teenagers and students as well. Suicide can happen to anyone. The age group which is presently becoming victim of such activity are mainly students and teenagers. A student or teenager will think of suicide or would commit suicide due to something that has occurred in his or her life or because the teen or student id going through a series of emotions.

Suicide is the word that many people like to avoid because talking about suicide makes most of the people uncomfortable. Suicide affect teenager and young adult around the globe each and every second. Every day rather every hour someone around the world lose someone close to them due to suicide. Suicide is an unfortunate occurrence that happens among all age group, however teenager and student are the age group most affected.

Suicide refer to the act or an instance of intentionally killing oneself. According to the world health organisation, every 45 min a person commit suicide somewhere in the corner of the world. While most countries with high suicide rate are poor, but surprising there are few highly developed and rich country which also ranked top on sad statistic.

In India, the increasing rate of suicide especially among teen and students have become a major topic to be concern. The official estimate of how many Indians takes their lives annually vary greatly but according to some sources, it might be as many as 250000 people every year in India. Almost half or major of the suicide that was committed are backed by the reason like family health, career, academic stress etc. Till 2014 suicide was an illegal activity but with amendment in 2014 the suicide became no more illegal practice in India. Maharashtra, Tamil, and Chhattisgarh etc. these states were more often ranked highest among suicide commitment. The reason behind having such highest ranking was because of growing urbanization and family pressure.

In today’s generation, where everyone especially teenager and student also young adults, are under pressure to perform amazingly well in their respective field, especially their career and where every person wants to excel, suicide is not new. Every person whether aged 22 or 12 has expectation to live up to –family, teacher and even person have expectations of all sort. This all type of expectation has led to increase in stress level among teenager and youth adults as well as students. There are many reason for stress like pressure to build career, relationship issue and family issue and so on.

Literature review.

Donald W Bechtold: This study has examine the relationship among cognition, academic development and psychological variable in culturally varied group of Indian children for five reservation and non- Indian children from adjacent locals. This study has included investigation measure of depressive symptoms as noted by their parents, teachers and students themselves. This study find that the risk factor for suicides or for depressive symptoms at the age of teen and adults is multiphase and unspecific. They include loss, stress family dysfunction and low self-esteem etc. This study tried to find out how these factors can trigger to suicide among adolescent.

William N. bender, Cecilia B Rosekran and Mory-kay crane: This article have reviewed the extant of stress, depression, risk resilience perception and learning disability among adolescent age group children. The study say that the risk of suicide is much too adolescent because of two main reason that are 1. They suffer from increased rate of depression and 2. Other is correlated to learning disability, they may predispose them to higher rate of suicide. The data indicates that certain subgroup of adolescent with learning disabilities manifest to higher rate of depression.

James R. Delisile: This study state that the environment is very important for an individual in which she/he lives in. The taught process of individual development in accordance to the environment. Hence, for the rate of suicide to get control we need to take step from the very binging like from school- colleges itself especially for the teenager and young adults. We need to have counselling at every fixed proportion of time in order to make the child understand the situation or to guide them how they can resolve the problems that comes in life.

OmPrakash L. Mandge: From this study, we have analysed the adequacy of designing specialized modules of data mining for suicidal behaviour. This study state that suicide is a serious public health problem, its demand our attention but prevention and control is very difficult task. This study has mainly focused on behavioural change of the person when there came the thought of such extreme step. It say suicide is preventable but it require provision for best possible condition for bringing up our children and youth, through the effective treatment of mental disorder to the environment control of risk factors.

Objectives

1. The main objective of this study is to identify main causes of suicide among the teenager, students and young adults.
2. Study also focuses on the major factors of suicide as well as provide suggestion to avoid constantly rising rate of suicide among students.
3. This study also try to find out the reason behind the constantly rising rate of suicide with passage of time.
4. Factors that mainly trigger them for such extreme step.

Hypothesis

• H1: Is women are more expose to suicide than man.
• H2: does this increasing rate of suicide affect country in any way.
• H3: Is it influence other to go for extreme step.
• H4: Is with modernization in generation led to more stress level and suicides.

Data Analysis

According to Oxford dictionary: Suicide is being defines as “An act of taking one’s own life”; one who die by his own hand, self- murder. In other words suicide is the process of ending one’s life purposefully. It is the problem of human being only because any animal can die due to disease or be distorted intensely or accidentally by and outsider’s agency such as human and natural calamities, but as far as it is known that only “man” and only man can kill himself willingly.

The risk of committing suicide is a significant factor in all type of depression or stress. However, it is also obvious that the depression is not only the factor which result in suicide, but the researchers say that about 50 – 90 percentages of the cases who go for this act it during depression episode. The attempts or approaches in order to understand suicide can be multidisciplinary, toxicology, physiologist, and physician etc. because a suicide cab be multi-faced and complex event and have different way to go for it in any way. The premature or unexpected or violent death has a negative repercussion in society and should be prevented from the society as soon as possible or whenever possible.

Suicide is a very complex topic and it can be performed r approached in multi- angular way. There can be variation among different from different view about this, all this depends upon the environment of particular person as well as upbringing of the personas well as the mind-set of individual. According to world trade organisation report suicide is being find as the major cause leading to the death among youth and adults.

According to science, the age of adolescences is age period during which the person faces depression, alcohol, drugs and anxiety show increase in prevalence and are the factor that contributes in the increasing the risk of suicide. The coverage of suicides by the media in species term all influences adolescent to go for such step and which led to increase in suicide rates. Hence, there we find aggregate increase in suicides, perhaps the reason may be they are highly susceptible to imitative behaviour. But the media never cover the fact or rarely discuss about the mental disorder suffered by the suicide victims may further led to increases the likelihood of imitation. Students with lots of expectation along with the combined stressed of academic demand and social fame, social problems and career choices evenly make the life of students and teenager to go with to fulfil all these expectation which make it impossible for some students to keep going continuously making adjustments that to their life with demanding situation.

Although when we make comparison between teenager and adult. The adult have more capacity to deal better with all these aspects and they have good handling power regarding anxiety, stress and pressure etc. But even after that too, life make them to face such challenges which make them to unbearable situation and tend to collapse. If proper and as soon as possible that stringent step towards suicide will not be taken than it might let to giving up life. And the rate might further increases. Some research say that as the world is getting modernize day by day, the places of human being are being fulfilled by the machines. Hence, the need of human is keep declining which directly affecting the person who is capable of that particular job which being occupied by the machine. Hence somewhere man is losing their value because of machine and here the person feel that there is no need of himself which also influence him to go for irreversible step.

Let’s look out some of the recent case regarding students.

• Case 1: Recently, In IIT Kanpur, A student of Ph.D. committed suicide in the hostel room the reason behind the suicide was not clear but there was no note kind of thing was found. But academically he was found to be good student but the life played the game with him which made him to go for such an irreversible step. This led to nothing but a family lose the dearest one of the family.
• Case 2: A 22 year old man committed suicide by drawing in one of the river early in the morning. Sources say that he took this extreme step because he was unable to bear the extreme stress due to being unable to find the job and has been really upset. There was a great need of job for his family welfare. However, he has not left any note behind the suicide so the actual reason was unknown.
• Case 3: A 19 year old girl had committed suicide by hanging herself at her residence after the man whom she love and wanted to marry refused her to marry. The man was cheating her with another girl and when she asked him, he use to not give answer. So, she decided to end her life and left suicide note. In her suicide note, she had mentioned all this and made her to take such drastic step.

In 2016, the number of suicide in India increased to 2, 30,314. Suicide was the most common cause of death in both the age group of 15-29 year and 15-39 year. About 8,00,000 people die by suicide worldwide every year and out of there 1,35,000 (17%) are resident of India, the nation with 17.5% of world population. Among this statistic, as per the world trade organisation the statistic of 2014 states that the students and teen age commit suicide because of major these reason are Failure in Examination (2403) and other family problem (28,602) mental illness(7140), love affair (4168).

Factors associated with suicides

The factors behind one commit suicide vary by individual to individual and the factor may take different forms, suicide is even associated with some negative events of various sorts. These may had led to hopelessness about the future which result in producing a mental sates that look to suicide as only the one way or suicide as only one possible way out to go for. According to research, suicide is the end product of long sequences of event that being in childhood. The cases of suicide are mainly form the people who became suicidal often come from the background of person in which there was some combination of a good deal of family psychopathology, child maltreatment or other reasons like family instability. This lead to the internally development of low self- esteem, hopelessness, building poor problems solving skill with somehow contributed or increased the risk rate of committing suicide in future. Because such happening again and again lead to weakness mentally among the people.

Biological causal factors:

According to some research done by the scientist, there is strong evidence that suicides sometimes run in families and the genetic factors have great role play in the risk associated with the suicide. Specifically, suicide victims have alteration in serotine functioning. This factor is trying to say that if in the family the suicide is being conducted before by any of the member than it has a direct influence over the other member of the family. Which indirectly influences them to take such drastic step, as the example are set by the family member itself.

Socio-cultural factors:

The all over attitude of the society towards death are important determinants of suicide rate in such an area are low correspondingly. Many rather most of the societies have develop such a mentalities that there should be strong sanction against suicide and even there are the section of people or societies which even consider suicides as the sin and most shameful activity to be performed. And the suicide rate is mainly favoured to be higher among those section of people who found it as the social pleasure.

There are many theories regarding suicides and that are as follow….

A. Emile Durkheim Theory

Durkheim performed a classic study of suicide and after having a study over suicide, he published his conclusion in year 1897 and the following were the reason for the suicide according to him….

1. Egoistic: Ego of an individual was found one of the tool that lead to have such drastic step. According to him, having not enough integration or loosing of social interaction or network or belief system.
2. Altruistic: building too much deep relation with other person or we can say too much integration that it make the person to sacrifice their life for the benefits of other. Such blindfold also lead to increase in rate of suicide in society.
3. Fatalistic: when the individual find himself too much regulated by the suicide or found or feel himself as be restricted by the society and fell as he is unable to enjoy freedom also to have a thought of suicide.

B. Dr. Sigmund Fraud’s theory.

This theory have its own prospective that it has classified that suicide as the inbuilt process that form because of aggression and tension which makes an individual’s animosity of himself and hence treat himself accordingly. In better words, we can say it represent a psychological conflict, which can’t be worked out due to great force of pressure and depression. Hence, once person develop animosity with himself it lead to creation of the reason of factor behind having such irreversible step.

C. Krauss Theory

According to this theory, in discussion on psychology cause of suicides, it was explained the suicide is often the result of an unachievable goals which is being made with lots of expectations a belief or also because of dysfunctional relationship, which we can say similar to social standpoint. According to karauss theory he explain that killing oneself is one in reality killing the internal one of the unattainable object. According to him there is always fight against internal satisfaction and external obligation and in reality the mind don’t understand that both are equally necessary for a person.

D. Thomas Masaryk theory.

This theory considered that the main basis of morality in society is the once religion. With the increasing non religions deregulation the social organization make people of the religion unhappy and result in social disconnection. According to him, suicide and mental illness these can be seen a measure of social disconnections. He has given more dominant of religious by defining religion as the system that make psychological life coherent because it offer a specified and structured way of thought process or thinking. According to him, modern education system destroys religious prospective without offering anything similar, because since does not include any ethical component. He thinks that people are more likely to take their lives and are higher exposed to mental sickness if they don’t have satisfactory prospective on life.

Within in the last two decades, there have been repeated suggestion that the students with learning disabilities are subjected to a higher risk for increased stress during the school year and such stress my lead to increased depression and perhaps even suicides. Hence, youth suicides or extensive suicides ideation in children below the age of 12 and around the age old 14 an age at which suicide beings to occurs more frequently in the general population.

Major Reasons responsible for suicides.

As above stated that suicide is a multi-faced activity and identifying particular reason behind such a step is difficult to identify as it may involve several factors. People go for such a vulnerable phrase of life that everything in front of them seems to be problem may seems like a life when they are troubled and even a small problem may seems like a big one and might seem unbearable. However, even it is difficult to identify the exact reason behind the suicide still there are some reasons which have been specially point out and majority of the cases happens because of these.

1. Biological aspects: this factor try to say that people belonging to such a family having an history of mental disorder or suicides are at increased risk of such step of suicide or suicide attempts. Biological aspects includes the environment in which a person is up bring or an environment in which suicide has occurred, it could produce a thought of suicide for vulnerable people. This type of family history reveals how level of the brain chemical serotonin may also result in suicide. As scientifically it is found that serotonin controls the impulsive actions, low level of such chemical may lead to impulsive behaviour.
2. Stress: Stress is found to be the major factor behind such step. Stress in teenager and young adults may cause due to academic pressure, parental expectation, and expectation regarding career making, relationship issue, peer pressure as well as pressure from family to do well in life. In some of the exceptional cases teen and students and young adults also faces physical, verbal or sexual exploitation which may create stress and can also result in suicides.
3. Depression: With day by day, the world is becoming complex and with this there it being a race of modernization increasing the cases of depression which result in loose of lives at a very initial stages. Depression can cause a feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and worthless in people and can be very dangerous particularly for the teen and young adults who faces or experiences violence at home, school, colleges, and at workplaces and feel alone or isolated from their peer or lack of social network of friend.
4. Major disappointments: Major disappointment in life also lead to go for such extreme step. It includes such as failure, rejections and loss of love one may trigger the people who became unable to handle the situations and see the suicide as only the left way to go for.
5. Substance abuse: Substance play one of the major role in the majority of suicide because drugs or alcohol abuse or addiction can lead to an impulsive behaviour especially it is found to be very vulnerable for teen suffering from other problem such as mental disorder or family difficulties, depression etc. Among young youth they build the thought that make them believe that substances abuse will bring them relief with surrounding but reality of it is just opposite, it makes them worsen these problems.

Abstract

Sherman (2013) proposed that the affirmation of an individual’s self-worth in one area can protect against negative behaviours in other areas. Rubin (2020) hypothesised that greater intentions for using time management strategies will occur in participants who self-affirm before watching a persuasive video message. In the present research, 414 participants who were undergraduate students from an Australian university or from an international participant pool called Prolific responded to an online Britton and Tesser’s TM Questionnaire after completing both, a writing task either present or absent of self-affirmation and viewing a persuasive video message. Participants in the self-affirmation condition had greater intentions to use time management strategies. Contrary to predictions, this research demonstrates no significant evidence for our hypothesis. This could be attributed to shortcomings in the methodology and research design that does not consider all immediate factors.

Minutes Before the Deadline: The Effects of Self-Affirmation on Attitudes Towards an Individual’s Intention to Adopt Time Management Strategies

Rubin (2020) states that “self-affirmation occurs when people highlight the positive aspects of themselves that they value”. The self has an objective to protect the integrity of an individual, when there is a threat to this, a defensive response can occur (Sherman & Cohen, 2006). In this situation self-affirmation could uncouple the connection between one’s integrity and hostility to a different attitude and reduce the impact leaving the individual more receptive to persuasive messages (Sherman, 2013). Therefore, the use of self-affirmation can result in less defensive behaviours from an individual, increasing the chance that they will adopt to attitude changing behaviours. For instance, eating healthy foods and exercising to avoid obesity or diabetes. The effect self-affirmation can have on attitude change is important as this natural defensive motivation where people do not want to admit their wrongs or shortcomings can lead to risky and unhealthy behaviours. Understanding this effect can allow for an approach towards attitude change that reduces or improves unhealthy behaviours.

The rationale behind this study lies in the importance of generalisation across various settings to provide evidence for the effect of self-affirmation. Previous research has surrounded the implications of self-affirmation in the sole context of health and improvements in unhealthy behaviours that can help or reduce the harm for people at risk by how they receive healthy behaviour promoting messages (Epton, Harris, Kane, van Koningsbruggen, & Sheeran, 2015; Sweeney, & Moyer, 2015, as cited in Rubin, 2020). To demonstrate that this effect can generalise across contexts, the present research differs by considering whether the same self-affirmation effect from this theory, can be replicated in an educational context. Although there has been prior research for self-affirmation in educational settings there has not been any specification on time management. Instead, the focus has been on academic achievement and, the influence affirming a valued attribute has on performance between genders (Martens et al., 2017).

University students have many deadlines that require a good sense of time management. Since these are tied directly to achievement and performance, some students can become defensive when improving their strategies is mentioned as there is a want not to be wrong or to admit shortcomings. If by thinking positively about their attributes, they can become less defensive and more accepting towards changing their attitude about time management strategies to allow for the beginning of healthier and more efficient time management behaviours, then self-affirmation is useful. Therefore, this research study aims to test the self-affirmation effect. Whether a university student’s intentions to use time management strategies after exposure to a persuasive video message can be significantly influenced by the presence or absence of self-affirmation.

The independent variable of this research is self-affirmation and whether this was present or absent. We manipulated this through writing tasks on allowing each participant to show a value that was either important or not important to them. The self-affirmation writing task version promoted positive thinking about themself while the control condition absent of self-affirmation forced the participants to write about a value that displays the negative or insecure aspects of themselves. This created mindset has a predicted influence on the level of intention towards adopting time management strategies and whether the participant is more or less defensive. The dependent variable is the intention to adopt time management strategies. We measured these intentions via an adapted version of Britton and Tesser;s (1991) Time Management Questionnaire.

Based on the previous research on the Self-Affirmation Theory (Sherman, 2013; Sherman & Cohen, 2006) and receptiveness to messages (Epton et al., 2015; Sweeney, & Moyer, 2015, as cited in Rubin, 2020), Rubin (2020) assumed that self-affirmation would stimulate stronger intentions to adopt time management strategies. Therefore, Rubin (2020) hypothesised that there should be a greater intention for an individual to use time management strategies after viewing a persuasive video message that encourages time management improvement if they have self-affirmed beforehand.

Method

Participants

There were a total number of 414 participants who were either undergraduate students enrolled in an Australian university or from an international participant pool called Prolific. Participants included 124 men, 285 women and 5 participants who identified as other. These participants had a mean age of 22.94 years (SD = 6.56). Randomisation occurred in the assigning of conditions for participants. There were 226 participants randomly assigned to the control condition of no self-affirmation and 188 participants randomly assigned to the self-affirmation condition.

Measures and Procedure

We followed the procedure depicted by Rubin (2020). We conducted this research using an online survey involving three sections: a writing task, a persuasive video message and a time management questionnaire.

This between-groups design randomly assigned participants to either the control or self-affirmation conditions. In the control condition, self-affirmation was absent as we asked participants to write about a value of their choice from the ten listed that was least important to them. In the self-affirmation condition, we asked participants to write about a value from the ten listed that was most important to them. They responded to the question “Please explain how you have shown this value outside of your university life”.

After completing the writing task, the participants viewed a 2-minute persuasive message video called “Time Management Mistakes” that encourages using time management strategies by identifying common time management mistakes and their negative effect on the participants.

After the participants have responded to the writing task and viewed the video, we then measured their intention to use time management strategies in the future via a questionnaire. We used an adapted version of Britton and Tesser’s (1991) Time Management Questionnaire. This questionnaire consists of 17 statements about intentions to adopt time management strategies. Participants rated their opinion via a 7-point Likert scale anchored at each end of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree). Participants completed the research study in approximately 15 minutes.

Results

The Cronbach alpha coefficient was .90 for the 17 intention to adopt time management strategies (IATMS) items measured in the adapted version of Britton & Tesser’s Time Management Questionnaire, indicating a strong internal reliability.

We averaged the scores from the 17 items across the IATMS scale to result in an overall index of a single average score. This score ranged between 1 and 7 for each participant. Depicting 1, as a minimum indicating little intention to adopt the time management strategies and 7 as the maximum or stronger intention to use these strategies in the future.

We performed an independent samples t-test on the participants’ mean scores for the IATMS data, comparing between our control and self-affirmation conditions. Participants randomly assigned to the self-affirmation condition demonstrated a greater intention to adopt time management strategies in the future (M = 5.22, SD = 1.03) than the participants within the control condition (M = 5.13, SD = 0.87). Therefore, we found no significant difference between our conditions.

This positive direction, while consistent with our hypothesis, did not support our predictions of the effect self-affirmation has on intentions to adopt time management strategies as it was not statistically significant t(401) = -0.97, p = .330.

Discussion

Consistent with the hypothesis, participants in the self-affirmation condition had stronger intentions to adopt time management strategies than participants in the control condition. However, contrary to predictions, although there was a positive influence, the effect of self-affirmation was not statistically significant.

The theory and hypotheses are correct as supported by previous research, whereas the methodology and research design may have limitations. This explains how the expected results of a positive direction between self-affirmation and our dependent variable can occur while also the unexpected outcome of a non-significant effect for self-affirmation in this research design.

In the previous research, there is the same manipulation of the self-affirmation variable, but the dependent variables and the results differ. The results discovered within recent meta-analyses conveyed that self-affirmation has a significant effect in regards to attitude change when in the position to be persuaded by received messages (Epton et al.,2015; Sweeney, & Moyer, 2015, as cited in Rubin, 2020). However, in the present research, the results differ. Whereby, this significance between self-affirmation and changed attitudes towards a dependent variable was not found. In the present research, the self-affirmation effect was applied to an educational context which contrasts to the purely health-based domain of the previous research into self-affirmation. This was to demonstrate the generalisability of this effect outside of purely health-related outcomes. This present research was also advantageous in the better manipulation of the self-affirmation variable despite the differing results.

An alternative explanation to consider is the possibility that the hypothesis and theory are invalid for this specific domain. The items on Britton and Tesser’s Time Management Questionnaire tested for strong internal reliability and was adapted specifically towards constructs and content within the educational area. There is a chance that the hypothesis could be invalid as the new domain of time management lacks extensive research.

Yet, there is still a preference for the primary explanation in which the hypothesis and theory are valid, and it is the methodology and research design that has a weakness. The hypothesis for the self-affirmation effect is founded throughout previous research and not just within the health field. Covering domains differing and similar to time management; there is a demonstration of similar outcomes of statistical significance. When looking at activity in the part of the brain responsible for positive valuation, Falk et al. (2015) noticed that participants in self-affirmation conditions had more activity levels. Harris, Harris & Miles (2017) studied the influence of self-affirmation on the performance of executive functioning tasks such as inhibition. Inhibition in the form of goal maintenance and attentional vigilance for self-regulation or, to be able to remain concentrated on a goal regardless of distractions, was seen to be better performed by those who self-affirmed. Therefore, since managing distractions and prioritising are essential components of efficient time management strategies, an increase in executive functioning would make it more likely that time management would display a significant effect.

Hanselman et al. (2017) at the time of conducting a large-scale experiment as a replication of the same method a smaller sample used to generate a significant positive impact, demonstrated no evidence of a significant effect. Even though the setting and procedure were the same, the large sample size for some unknown reasoning did not have the same results. Therefore, the research design of 414 participants could be too large of a sample to produce the expected results of statistical significance.

A limitation of this research study could reflect the influence of sample size as an explanation for non-significant results. We are unable to establish what within this research study that self-affirmation has a statistically significant effect on behaviours or attitude change.

Future research into this domain should continue to demonstrate variance in sample size to ascertain whether, for an educational context, if smaller sample sizes are required to produce a significant effect. Future research should also consider other factors that influence the specific topic of time management strategies for university students. As personality traits have an impact on behaviours and attitudes, an approach could consider the Big 5 personality traits, especially Conscientiousness. The ability to prioritise and manage distractions are characteristics of people who are self-disciplined and strive for achievement, those who are high in Conscientiousness. Therefore, people scoring low in Conscientiousness would have different results to those who are high in Conscientiousness if the effect of self-affirmation were generalised for certain personality traits.

The findings of this present research do not support the hypothesis of self-affirmation affecting intentions to adopt time management strategies but does not disprove the self-affirmation theory. As a modern study without any prior research into this area, the purpose, or implications on the real world that the results from this research can have would be to commence further research. Pointing out time management as a focal point for university students and acknowledging that there was a positive effect between attributing a positive value to yourself so that you can overcome your defences to change towards better attitudes and healthier behaviours.