The relationship between students’ consumerist attitudes towards education, academic entitlement and job entitlement: The role of neutralizing techniques

Abstract

While previous studies have established the type of damage that could be done by students’ academic entitlement to the quality of education as well as to society, there is still a dearth of knowledge on the various antecedents of this type of entitlement, its impact on the entitlement behavior of students after graduation, and the underlying mechanisms through which such effects could be facilitated. Thus, by relying on neutralization theory as an anchor, we introduce a research model and propose that student consumerism acts as one of these antecedents and that students who exhibit academic entitlement would equally transfer this attitude to the labor market by engaging in all forms of job entitlement practices, through the mediating influence of neutralization. Making use of a descriptive cross-sectional survey as well as close-ended self-administered and structured questionnaires, research data was elicited from 347 students that were conveniently selected from 2 higher institutions of learning in South Africa. Results from the structural equation modeling reveal that academic entitlement has a significant effect on job entitlement and neutralization. Moreover, neutralization has a significant effect on job entitlement, whereas students’ consumerist attitudes have a non-significant effect on academic entitlement. Furthermore, students’ consumerist attitudes have a significant effect on neutralization and job entitlement. Lastly, while academic entitlement does not mediate the relationship between students’ consumerist attitudes and job entitlement, neutralization partially mediates the relationship between students’ consumerist attitudes and job entitlement. While our results provide crucial insight into the damaging and spillover effects of academic entitlement both on educational quality and on society, they also open the window for potential intervention strategies that could be employed by higher educational institutions, education planners, government agencies, and school administrators, especially in situations when there is a need to curb the incidence of entitlement behavior both in school settings and in society.