The Role of Professional Education in Youth Adaptation: Perception Dynamics

The degree of youth adaptability, understood as the ability of young people to integrate into social institutions, particularly the sphere of education, varies significantly within the context of educational stratification. The article analyzes the dynamics of perceptions regarding the role of education as a success criterion based on materials from the all-Russian monitoring conducted by the Institute of Sociology FCTAS RAS (data 2016–2024). The study identifies qualitative differences in adaptation strategies among youth subgroups and proposes a typology of adaptation strategies. Specifically, the research reveals the scale and possible reasons for the socio-cultural devaluation of higher professional education by the most educated part of the youth. The study discovers similarities in socio-psychological adaptation mechanisms between youth without professional education and those with higher education. The research highlights the stability of adaptation behavior among mid-level specialists, which may be related to both the specifics of blue-collar human capital and the height of institutional barriers in achieving desired goals. The most significant temporal markers in the studied period were 2020 and 2022. The first stage of the studied period was characterized by a sharp increase in the proportion of well-adapted young people with higher education, indicating an increased adaptive capacity of this group to changes. The lag in adaptation among the mid-level specialists group indicates the need for further study of factors influencing the adaptation potential of this category of youth. A significant trend was observed in the group without professional education, where there was an increase in the proportion of moderately adapted young people at the expense of poorly adapted ones. This may indicate the presence of internal adaptation resources even in the absence of formal professional education. By 2024, a trend towards stabilization of adaptability indicators was identified. The reduction of the poorly adapted group across all educational subgroups suggests a process of redistribution of adaptation resources.

youth, education, social behavior, educational stratification, social adaptation