Abstract
Background: A college student's academic major is not always the total free choice of the student in Chinese universities. If a student is not enrolled in the program, he/she has chosen, the student is usually placed in an academic program at the university's discretion. Further, a Chinese college student is usually required to finish and graduate from the program he/she has started in the freshman year. If a student does not like the academic major yet has to complete it, the student may feel frustrated during the years of college education and may experience certain psychopathological problems.
Methods: A structured questionnaire including demographics, familial and social circumstances, and personal characteristics was administered to a sample of college students in China. The randomly selected sample consisted of 2,400 undergraduates (males=884, 36.8%; females=1,516, 63.2%) from a university campus in terms of mental health condition as well as social and cultural life. Major outcome variables were satisfaction with academic major, self-esteem (SE), depression (CES-D) and psychological strains (PSS).
Results: Those students satisfied with the academic major scored higher on self-esteem (t = 3.997, p<0.001), and lower on depression (t =-4.144, p<0.001) and psychological strains (t =-4.729, p<0.001) than those who were not satisfied with their academic majors.
Conclusions: The college students who do not like their study area but must stick to it feel less happy and experience, to some extent, psychological strains. This can be a problem in the Chinese higher education system. Education reform should be recommended based on the findings from this research.
Keywords
College students, Academic major, Satisfaction, Mental health, Depression, Self-esteem, Psychological strains