University Students’ Perception Of Values (The Exemplar of Karabuk University)

Ever growing attention has been given to the concept of value during the recent years, the reason for which is not that we attribute great importance to values, but, to the contrary, we have rapidly become alienated to our values. As we, the society, have preferred to be a satellite for about 300 years, the alienation to our culture and our values has ever been estranging us from our self at a fast pace. The detachment in our society from values, which started with the Age of Tulip, is attributed to the Industrial Revolution in the West. In truth, this degeneration has now grown into an irrepressible global problem in a time when technological developments have been consumed very fast. Such societies as consider devotion to their own culture as a burden on their shoulders will, as has been the case so far, be influenced by the dominant culture and be enslaved thereby. Today, when the world has been globalized and turned into a small village, it is obvious that mostly children and the youth have been affected by the negations and the media of anomy. The subject of this study is to discover the priorities in values of the educated youth, university students. The universe of this research is composed of those students of Karabuk University that selected the course of Values Education in the Fall Semester of the Academic Years of 2012-2013 and 2013-2014. Students from 14 different branches have taken part in this study. The objective of the research is to determine to what extent university students are aware of those values we have been doing away with. In the meantime, revealing to what degree the course of Values Education serves as a determiner in this context forms the quintessential part of this research. According to the results of the Study of Perception of Values, which we have carried out with those 340 students (180 male and 160 female) that attend the University of Karabuk, the students’ priorities in values range, respectively, as follows: religious, moral, social, political, aesthetical, theoretical-scientific and economic values.

Keywords

Concept of Value, perception of value, values education, students of Karabuk University.