Percentage of First-Time Students at Public Four-Year Institutions Who Were State Residents, Fall 2002 and Fall 2012
The percentage of first-time public four-year college students who were residents of the states in which they were enrolled declined from 84% in fall 2002 to 80% in fall 2012.
Figure 28: Percentage of First-Time Students at Public Four-Year Institutions Who Were State Residents, Fall 2002 and Fall 2012
NOTE: Four-year institution categories include only those institutions where more than 50% of degrees/certificates awarded are bachelor’s degrees or higher.
SOURCES: NCES, IPEDS enrollment data; calculations by the authors.
Key Points
In fall 2012, the percentage of first-time students at public four-year institutions who were state residents ranged from 34% in Vermont and 38% in North Dakota to 93% in Alaska and New Jersey and 94% in Texas.
The largest declines between fall 2002 and fall 2012 in the proportion of students who were state residents were 18 percentage points in North Dakota (from 56% to 38%) and 16 percentage points in Wyoming (from 66% to 50%).
In 10 states, the percentage of first-time students at public four-year institutions who were state residents increased between fall 2002 and fall 2012. The largest increases were 5 percentage points in Maryland (from 70% to 75%) and 6 percentage points in Tennessee (from 84% to 90%).
Also Important
Figure 28 categorizes only institutions where more than 50% of degrees/certificates awarded are bachelor’s degrees or higher as four-year institutions. Using the IPEDS definition, which counts any institution offering bachelor’s degrees as a four-year institution, would increase the percentage of students who were state residents in fall 2012 from 80% to 82%. The additional institutions counted as four-year by the IPEDS definition are primarily community colleges offering a small number of bachelor’s degrees. These institutions enroll relatively small numbers of out-of-state students.
The latest national data shows that more students are getting their high-school diplomas than ever before. Just over 82 percent of the students who were high-school seniors during the 2013-14 year graduated, up from 81 percent the year before. The rate has inched up annually over the last few years, largely because of strides made by disadvantaged students.
But that doesn’t mean more kids are going to college. Quite the opposite. Recently released numbers out of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center suggests that college-enrollment rates have actually decreased—and for the fourth straight year, all despite massive increases in federal aid for students who can’t afford tuition. The number of students enrolling in colleges and universities this year is 1.7 percent lower than it was last year. (The percentage of high-school graduates who immediately enrolled in college fell from 69 percent in 2008 to 66 percent in 2013.)
This isn’t new information, but it is new data for a new year, so it’s worth asking again: Where are all those high-school graduates going if they’re not ending up in higher education? For economists and education experts, the answer is obvious. As the Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign economist Jeffrey Brown have famously argued, students were more likely to enroll and stay in college during the Great Recession; at a time when there are fewer jobs, would-be college students are more likely to invest in opportunities to develop skills and enhance their chances at getting employed. People are drawn back toward the workforce once the economy has started to recover, which is what experts suspect is happening now. So this college-enrollment trend could be considered, as The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson wrote back in 2013, “actually a sign of good news.”
Something very different and quite noteworthy is happening at the K-12 level, though, where traditionally at-risk students, particularly kids of color, are responsible for the biggest improvements in high-school completion. Conversely, disadvantaged students, in this case those who are poor or coming from families without a history of going to college, are a big reason the college-enrollment numbers are going down, as are people over age 25. Based on U.S. Census Bureau figures, the percentage of students from low-income families attending college immediately after getting their high-school diplomas has declined by 10 percentage points since 2008, to 46 percent. Only those institutions that serve the largest percentages of disadvantaged students—two-year and for-profit colleges—have seen enrollment drop; it’s actually slightly increased or remained steady at four-year institutions.
In some ways, the high-school graduates who head straight into the labor market are the most practical among diploma recipients. The Atlantic’s Gillian White has pointed out that the types of institutions seeing the most significant declines in enrollment tend to offer degrees that provide only marginal improvements in job prospects compared to high-school diplomas. Today, the popularity of a given degree and its return on investment are often “almost inversely related,” said Anthony Carnevale, who directs Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The high-school graduates who tend to forgo college and make it in the economy, Carnevale added, are also the ones who can land jobs that aren’t traditionally associated with higher-education degrees—blue-collar fields such as manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. Carnevale said there are only a few ways to beat the college wage premium—the income advantage of having a college degree—“and generally the only people who beat this game are boys.” In blue-collar jobs, “you can work your way up, learn on the job. But there’s none of that for females. Basically, there’s no real pathway for girls out of high school [except college].” No wonder women account for a majority of today’s college-degree-holders. “When enrollments go down, the first thing you lose are the boys.”
But going the non-college route is increasingly impractical, even when the objective is a job that’s more vocational in nature. While a job may certainly be an appealing alternative to an increasingly costly postsecondary education, the college wage premium has risen drastically since the early 1980s. The Pew Research Center called this “the rising cost of not going to college” in a report last year, concluding, “On virtually every measure of economic well-being and career attainment—from personal earnings to job satisfaction to the share employed full time—young college graduates are outperforming their peers with less education. And when today’s young adults are compared with previous generations, the disparity in economic outcomes between college graduates and those with a high school diploma or less formal schooling has never been greater in the modern era.”
Carnevale said a key obstacle to getting more high-school graduates enrolled in college is limited information; postsecondary education in the U.S. is “like a big computer with no operating system.” Americans, he said, have a “chaotic” understanding of the role of college in the economy. “Students are lost; they don’t know how to make these connections” between the value of a college degree and their position within the economy. This is why lobbying groups and businesses have been advocating for greater correspondence between career-and-technical education and the demands of the labor market and development of more alternative credentialing programs.
The College Scorecard, which Obama unveiled last September, uses troves of institutional data to improve transparency about the country’s colleges and universities; users can sort results based on various metrics, such as the percent of students who earn above high-school graduates or the average salary after attending. But as Carnevale argued, it’s “more symbolic than real.” It gives users access to federal data on graduation rates and attendance-cost figures at thousands of colleges and universities, but it doesn’t break that data down by area of study. For example, if I were to search for “Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs” at four-year private universities, the results on graduation rates and salary outcomes would only reflect students who attended the school at large—not the communications or journalism graduates specifically. Yet, for the most part, a person’s major is, as a Brookings paper concluded last year, “likely a much more important driver of salaries than the overall institution.” In fact, close to a third of Americans with associate’s degrees—30 percent—earn more than those with bachelor’s degrees, according to research done by the Georgetown workforce center.
The growing mismatch between rates for high-school graduation and college attendance in the U.S. may largely have to do with the challenges with outreach and resources faced by community colleges, which often struggle to provide support to students. “Most people would say higher education is not connected to the economy, which is not true,” Carnevale said. “The higher-ed curriculum is very oriented toward the economy (with some obvious exceptions)—it’s just not connected strongly enough, as a counseling and career-planning system.”
There is “this information problem, this confusion, the Tower of Babel that you face when you’re looking at the economy and higher education,” he continued. “You’re young; you don’t want to take out loans … People are pretty much just wandering around between youth dependency and adult dependence.” And ultimately, even high-school graduation rates are falling short of expectations. This year marked the first time in a while that the country stumbled on its way to reaching a 90-percent graduation rate by 2020.
Most students experience some level of anxiety during an exam
However, when anxiety affects exam performance it has become a problem.
General preparation/building confidence: Review your personal situation and skills
Academic counselors can help you in these areas, or refer to our Guides on the topic:
Managing time
(dealing with procrastination, distractions, laziness)
Organizing material to be studied and learned
Take a step by step approach to build a strategy and not get overwhelmed
Outside pressures
success/failure consequences (grades, graduation), peer pressure, competitiveness, etc.
Reviewing your past performance on tests
to improve and learn from experience
Test preparation to reduce anxiety:
Approach the exam with confidence:
Use whatever strategies you can to personalize success: visualization, logic, talking to your self, practice, team work, journaling, etc.
View the exam as an opportunity to show how much you’ve studied and to receive a reward for the studying you’ve done
Be prepared!
Learn your material thoroughly and organize what materials you will need for the test. Use a checklist
Choose a comfortable location for taking the test
with good lighting and minimal distractions
Allow yourself plenty of time,
especially to do things you need to do before the test and still get there a little early
Avoid thinking you need to cram just before
Strive for a relaxed state of concentration
Avoid speaking with any fellow students who have not prepared, who express negativity, who will distract your preparation
A program of exercise
is said to sharpen the mind
Get a good night’s sleep
the night before the exam
Don’t go to the exam with an empty stomach
Fresh fruits and vegetables are often recommended to reduce stress.
Stressful foods can include processed foods, artificial sweeteners, carbonated soft drinks, chocolate, eggs, fried foods, junk foods, pork, red meat, sugar, white flour products, chips and similar snack foods, foods containing preservatives or heavy spices
Take a small snack, or some other nourishment
to help take your mind off of your anxiety.
Avoid high sugar content (candy) which may aggravate your condition
During the test:
Read the directions carefully
Budget your test taking time
Change positions to help you relax
If you go blank, skip the question and go on
If you’re taking an essay test
and you go blank on the whole test, pick a question and start writing. It may trigger the answer in your mind
Don’t panic
when students start handing in their papers. There’s no reward for finishing first
Use relaxation techniques
If you find yourself tensing and getting anxious during the test:
Relax; you are in control.
Take slow, deep breaths
Don’t think about the fear
Pause: think about the next step and keep on task, step by step
Use positive reinforcement for yourself:
Acknowledge that you have done, and are doing, your best
Expect some anxiety
It’s a reminder that you want to do your best and can provide energy
Just keep it manageable
Realize that anxiety can be a “habit”
and that it takes practice to use it as a tool to succeed
After the test, review how you did
List what worked, and hold onto these strategies
It does not matter how small the items are: they are building blocks to success
List what did not work for improvement
Celebrate that you are on the road to overcoming this obstacle
Check out local centers and resources in your school for assistance!
If you are aware that you have a problem with test anxiety,
be sure your teacher or instructor knows before any testing begins
(and not the hour before!).
There may be other options to evaluate your knowledge or performance within the subject matter.
Raising a child with diagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder was heartbreaking for us as parents. As we watched our young child struggle through the private and public school systems, I felt that as a K-12 teacher, I could surely homeschool my own child. Yet we continued to switch schools, work with teachers, and looked at all the options in the midst of daily misery. We were warned that our son needed the social aspect of a brick and mortar school. We left him in the schools until his sophomore year of high school when we finally had enough. We again searched for schools that might specialize in children that had ADHD in common so we would not have to constantly fight for what he needed in order to be successful in learning. Unfortunately, the boarding school that he ended up in was not it was all it promised to be either. We feared how he would be able to get a high school diploma and what college would accept him if we homeschooled at this point. Today, I found this and hope that it might help others make a different choice. So looking back, would I homeschool. You bet! ~Sandy
Every year homeschoolers are admitted to hundreds of colleges in at least five countries. Those who prepare thoroughly can be admitted with full scholarships at those selective colleges that some parents daydream about their children attending. Read on to find out which colleges have admitted homeschooled children, and continue to the linked subpages to find out more about how to get into the college of your choice.
Selective Colleges That Have Accepted Homeschoolers
More than 1,000 schools of higher education appear on this FAQ and its subpages, and links to over 980 college Web sites appear on these pages. Entries followed by double exclamation points (!!) are those confirmed to have admitted at least one homeschooled applicant. Asterisks (* *) following names of schools known to accept homeschoolers show how many printed sources of college ratings mention those schools as “selective” or “good” colleges. See subpages forother colleges A-G, for other colleges H-S, for other colleges T-Z, and for open-admission colleges reported to have accepted home-schooled students. Use this site’s site search feature to find out whether a college you know about is already listed, and on which page.
Selective Colleges Known to Have Admitted Homeschoolers
Entries followed by double exclamation points (!!) are those confirmed to have admitted at least one homeschooled applicant. Asterisks (* *) following names of schools known to accept homeschoolers show how many printed sources of college ratings mention those schools as “selective” or “good” colleges. See subpages for other colleges A-G, forother colleges H-S, for other colleges T-Z, and for open-admission colleges reported to have accepted home-schooled students.
It is reported that every one of the colleges listed in the various subpages of this FAQ has offered admission to at least one “home schooled” applicant (who may or may not have enrolled there). Those that I have confirmed as definitely having made a firm offer of admission to a homeschooled applicant are marked with double exclamation points (“!!”) on the page where they are listed. Colleges known to recruit homeschoolers, those that describe admission procedures for home-schooled applicants in their application materials, or those whose admission officers indicate that they would admit homeschooled applicants are marked as “[yes].” As the reconfirmation process continues, the “!!” mark will take precedence over any other applicable mark describing a school’s admission of homeschoolers. Below is information to help you pursue knowledge about homeschool college admission.
Admission Criteria
More than 600 open admission two-year colleges and more than 100 open admission four-year colleges in the United States are listed in The College Handbook 2000 at pages 1791-1794. Those known to have admitted homeschoolers are now listed on a page about open-admission schools for homeschoolers to save space on this main FAQ page.
College admission of applicants without high school diplomas has been going on for a long time. Harvard College specifically mentions that Harvard has never required a high school diploma for admission. Stanford University makes clear in a form letter to homeschooled applicants that a high school diploma is not necessary for admission. The United States Air Force Academy now has a specific Web page with answers to questions about homeschool admission procedures, a sign that it gets that kind of question quite often. More and more colleges are following their lead and mentioning admission policies for homeschoolers on-line or in printed materials.
A parenting resources Web site features an on-line article by Bruce Hammond that makes clear that many colleges think homeschoolers are “often better socialized and more mature than students in public schools.” The pan-Canadian homeschooling resource site on the Web has a detailed page about Canadian Universities Accepting Homeschoolerswith much information about specific admission requirements. If you want to get into higher education, home education in younger years is no barrier. A useful website about this issue is the Homeschool Success: High School Planning for College Admissions Success website kept by a friend of mine whom I met at conferences about education.
Colleges that accept homeschoolers rely on various materials in place of high school grades, including, perhaps, portfolios of student work, the applicant’s personal essay, SAT I test or ACT test scores, grades from open admission community colleges, and personal recommendations. Challenging extracurricular activities are generally important for nontraditional applicants, and especially important for all applicants who hope to get scholarships. I have found out from telephone interviews with admission officers that admission criteria can vary quite widely. One Bible college admission officer told me that homeschoolers are welcomed by her school, but that applicants without a high school diploma are required to take the GED exam. Some quite selective colleges will admit anyone with scores on the SAT or ACT above a certain level, and will consider other applicants based on portfolios of the applicants’ academic work. Cafi Cohen’s Web site has especially detailed descriptions of some colleges’ admission procedures that I won’t duplicate here; her site is very helpful.
Other Pages of This FAQ
Feel free to browse the other pages of the Colleges That Admit Homeschoolers FAQ, besides this main page, for more detailed information. The overall structure of the FAQ is like the outline below:
Colleges That Admit Homeschoolers FAQ (Guide to Selective College Admission for Home-schooled Applicants) [this page]
A guide to selective colleges that admit homeschooled applicants, with other college information for families.
Colleges (A-G) (two-year and four-year) with neither open admission nor highly selective admission policies reported to have admitted homeschooled applicants.
Colleges (H-S) (two-year and four-year) with neither open admission nor highly selective admission policies reported to have admitted homeschooled applicants.
Colleges (T-Z) (two-year and four-year) with neither open admission nor highly selective admission policies reported to have admitted homeschooled applicants.
A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
John Stuart Mill On Liberty (1859)
Feel free to contact the Learn in Freedom™ site owner, Karl M. Bunday, at any time. Fill out this site’s Google Docs comment form or email or send postal mail to the Learn in Freedom webmaster as you like.
webmaster@learninfreedom.org
Karl M. Bunday
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Each day we try to better understand the people and the world around us. Learning about ourselves and others is a normal part of our daily living. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs began as far back as 1943. Today, the needs have changed a bit as the world evolves. Changes have been made accordingly. Understanding basic needs is a great way to simplify how we deal with ourselves and others. Please watch the video. ~Sandy
McLeod, S. A. (2014). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Maslow wanted to understand what motivates people. He believed that people possess a set of motivation systems unrelated to rewards or unconscious desires.
Maslow (1943) stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfill the next one, and so on.
The earliest and most widespread version of Maslow’s (1943, 1954) hierarchy of needs includes five motivational needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
This five stage model can be divided into basic (or deficiency) needs (e.g. physiological, safety, love, and esteem) and growth needs (self-actualization).
The deficiency, or basic needs are said to motivate people when they are unmet. Also, the need to fulfil such needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are denied. For example, the longer a person goes without food the more hungry they will become.
One must satisfy lower level basic needs before progressing on to meet higher level growth needs. Once these needs have been reasonably satisfied, one may be able to reach the highest level called self-actualization.
Every person is capable and has the desire to move up the hierarchy toward a level of self-actualization. Unfortunately, progress is often disrupted by failure to meet lower level needs. Life experiences, including divorce and loss of job may cause an individual to fluctuate between levels of the hierarchy.
Maslow noted only one in a hundred people become fully self-actualized because our society rewards motivation primarily based on esteem, love and other social needs.
The original hierarchy of needs five-stage model includes:
5. Self-Actualization needs – realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
Maslow posited that human needs are arranged in a hierarchy:
‘It is quite true that man lives by bread alone — when there is no bread. But what happens to man’s desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled?
At once other (and “higher”) needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new (and still “higher”) needs emerge and so on. This is what we mean by saying that the basic human needs are organized into a hierarchy of relative prepotency’ (Maslow, 1943, p. 375).
The expanded hierarchy of needs:
It is important to note that Maslow’s (1943, 1954) five stage model has been expanded to include cognitive and aesthetic needs (Maslow, 1970a) and later transcendence needs (Maslow, 1970b).
Changes to the original five-stage model are highlighted and include a seven-stage model and a eight-stage model, both developed during the 1960’s and 1970s.
1. Biological and Physiological needs – air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.
2. Safety needs – protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, etc.
3. Love and belongingness needs – friendship, intimacy, affection and love, – from work group, family, friends, romantic relationships.
6. Aesthetic needs – appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.
7. Self-Actualization needs – realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
8. Transcendence needs – helping others to achieve self actualization.
Self-actualization
Instead of focusing on psychopathology and what goes wrong with people, Maslow (1943) formulated a more positive account of human behavior which focused on what goes right. He was interested in human potential, and how we fulfill that potential.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1943, 1954) stated that human motivation is based on people seeking fulfillment and change through personal growth. Self-actualized people are those who were fulfilled and doing all they were capable of.
The growth of self-actualization (Maslow, 1962) refers to the need for personal growth and discovery that is present throughout a person’s life. For Maslow, a person is always ‘becoming’ and never remains static in these terms. In self-actualization a person comes to find a meaning to life that is important to them.
As each person is unique the motivation for self-actualization leads people in different directions (Kenrick et al., 2010). For some people self-actualization can be achieved through creating works of art or literature, for others through sport, in the classroom, or within a corporate setting.
Maslow (1962) believed self-actualization could be measured through the concept of peak experiences. This occurs when a person experiences the world totally for what it is, and there are feelings of euphoria, joy and wonder.
It is important to note that self-actualization is a continual process of becoming rather than a perfect state one reaches of a ‘happy ever after’ (Hoffman, 1988).
Maslow offers the following description of self-actualization:
‘It refers to the person’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially.
The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions’ (Maslow, 1943, p. 382–383).
Maslow (1968): Some of the characteristics of self-actualized people
Although we are all, theoretically, capable of self-actualizing, most of us will not do so, or only to a limited degree. Maslow (1970) estimated that only two percent of people will reach the state of self actualization. He was particularly interested in the characteristics of people whom he considered to have achieved their potential as persons.
By studying 18 people he considered to be self-actualized (including Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein) Maslow (1970) identified 15 characteristics of a self-actualized person.
Characteristics of self-actualizers:
1. They perceive reality efficiently and can tolerate uncertainty;
2. Accept themselves and others for what they are;
3. Spontaneous in thought and action;
4. Problem-centered (not self-centered);
5. Unusual sense of humor;
6. Able to look at life objectively;
7. Highly creative;
8. Resistant to enculturation, but not purposely unconventional;
9. Concerned for the welfare of humanity;
10. Capable of deep appreciation of basic life-experience;
11. Establish deep satisfying interpersonal relationships with a few people;
12. Peak experiences;
13. Need for privacy;
14. Democratic attitudes;
15. Strong moral/ethical standards.
Behavior leading to self-actualization:
(a) Experiencing life like a child, with full absorption and concentration;
(b) Trying new things instead of sticking to safe paths;
(c) Listening to your own feelings in evaluating experiences instead of the voice of tradition, authority or the majority;
(d) Avoiding pretense (‘game playing’) and being honest;
(e) Being prepared to be unpopular if your views do not coincide with those of the majority;
(f) Taking responsibility and working hard;
(g) Trying to identify your defenses and having the courage to give them up.
The characteristics of self-actualizers and the behaviors leading to self-actualization are shown in the list above. Although people achieve self-actualization in their own unique way, they tend to share certain characteristics. However, self-actualization is a matter of degree, ‘There are no perfect human beings’ (Maslow,1970a, p. 176).
It is not necessary to display all 15 characteristics to become self-actualized, and not only self-actualized people will display them. Maslow did not equate self-actualization with perfection. Self-actualization merely involves achieving ones potential. Thus, someone can be silly, wasteful, vain and impolite, and still self-actualize. Less than two percent of the population achieve self-actualization.
Educational applications
Maslow’s (1968) hierarchy of needs theory has made a major contribution to teaching and classroom management in schools. Rather than reducing behavior to a response in the environment, Maslow (1970a) adopts a holistic approach to education and learning. Maslow looks at the entire physical, emotional, social, and intellectual qualities of an individual and how they impact on learning.
Applications of Maslow’s hierarchy theory to the work of the classroom teacher are obvious. Before a student’s cognitive needs can be met they must first fulfill their basic physiological needs. For example a tired and hungry student will find it difficult to focus on learning. Students need to feel emotionally and physically safe and accepted within the classroom to progress and reach their full potential.
Maslow suggests students must be shown that they are valued and respected in the classroom and the teacher should create a supportive environment. Students with a low self-esteem will not progress academically at an optimum rate until their self-esteem is strengthened.
APA Style References
Hoffman, E. (1988). The right to be human: A biography of Abraham Maslow. Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.
Kenrick, D. T., Neuberg, S. L., Griskevicius, V., Becker, D. V., & Schaller, M. (2010). Goal-Driven Cognition and Functional Behavior The Fundamental-Motives Framework. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 63-67.
The most significant limitation of Maslow’s theory concerns his methodology. Maslow formulated the characteristics of self-actualized individuals from undertaking a qualitative method called biographical analysis.
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He looked at the biographies and writings of 18 people he identified as being self-actualized. From these sources he developed a list of qualities that seemed characteristic of this specific group of people, as opposed to humanity in general.
From a scientific perspective there are numerous problems with this particular approach. First, it could be argued that biographical analysis as a method is extremely subjective as it is based entirely on the opinion of the researcher. Personal opinion is always prone to bias, which reduces the validity of any data obtained. Therefore Maslow’s operational definition of self-actualization must not be blindly accepted as scientific fact.
Furthermore, Maslow’s biographical analysis focused on a biased sample of self-actualized individuals, prominently limited to highly educated white males (such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, William James, Aldous Huxley, Gandhi, Beethoven).
Although Maslow (1970) did study self-actualized females, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Mother Teresa, they comprised a small proportion of his sample. This makes it difficult to generalize his theory to females and individuals from lower social classes or different ethnicity. Thus questioning the population validity of Maslow’s findings.
Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to empirically test Maslow’s concept of self-actualization in a way that causal relationships can be established.
Another criticism concerns Maslow’s assumption that the lower needs must be satisfied before a person can achieve their potential and self-actualize. This is not always the case, and therefore Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in some aspects has been falsified.
Through examining cultures in which large numbers of people live in poverty (such as India) it is clear that people are still capable of higher order needs such as love and belongingness. However, this should not occur, as according to Maslow, people who have difficulty achieving very basic physiological needs (such as food, shelter etc.) are not capable of meeting higher growth needs.
Also, many creative people, such as authors and artists (e.g. Rembrandt and Van Gough) lived in poverty throughout their lifetime, yet it could be argued that they achieved self-actualization.
Contemporary research by Tay & Diener (2011) has tested Maslow’s theory by analyzing the data of 60,865 participants from 123 countries, representing every major region of the world. The survey was conducted from 2005 to 2010.
Respondents answered questions about six needs that closely resemble those in Maslow’s model: basic needs (food, shelter); safety; social needs (love, support); respect; mastery; and autonomy. They also rated their well-being across three discrete measures: life evaluation (a person’s view of his or her life as a whole), positive feelings (day-to-day instances of joy or pleasure), and negative feelings (everyday experiences of sorrow, anger, or stress).
The results of the study support the view that universal human needs appear to exist regardless of cultural differences. However, the ordering of the needs within the hierarchy was not correct.
“Although the most basic needs might get the most attention when you don’t have them,” Diener explains, “you don’t need to fulfill them in order to get benefits [from the others].” Even when we are hungry, for instance, we can be happy with our friends. “They’re like vitamins,” Diener says about how the needs work independently. “We need them all.”
I understand the desire to help everyone. I have been in education for 33+ years! We do need to know our boundaries of what we should and shouldn’t do in order to serve God and His people. ~Sandy
“Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24)
Call it tough love. God’s tough love.
If you don’t work, you don’t eat.
“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10)
And it all started in the Garden of Eden:
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15)
Working with our hands and minds is all part of God’s blueprint and purpose for our lives.
Faith in God plus Labor = Success = Prosperity = A blessing to others.
We are rewarded through our labor because God wants us to be successful as we keep our mind on Him:
“In everything he did he had great success, because the Lord was with him.” (1 Samuel 18:14)
God wants us to be prosperous:
“But remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which He swore to your ancestors, as it is today.” (Deuteronomy 8:18)
God wants us to use our labor as wage-earners to be a blessing to others in need:
“Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.” (Proverbs 14:31)
God does not want us to be, well, lazy:
“The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.” (Proverbs 13:4)
America is in Great Distress
Our country’s Judeo-Christian values and work ethics are quickly being eroded by a nationwide Nanny State belief system where government wants to take care of us from cradle to grave.
Our new government health-care mandate actually rewards you through subsidies for doing less, not more, work.
The lower your income, the higher your subsidy. It kills the incentive to work to succeed.
It’s a counter-productive system that feeds on itself. The more you are dependent on government to take care of you, the less you see the need to take care of yourself.
Unfortunately, it has given rise to an entitlement society.
But before you get your feathers ruffled, I am not advocating doing away with social programs such as food stamps (an $80 billion-a-year government program that costs twice what it did just five years ago) and welfare.
I am advocating doing away with the deep fraud that costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually, and doing away with the notion that government programs are a substitute for hard work.
Marijuana Makes the Problem Worse
Now that recreational use of marijuana has been legalized in Colorado, a new form of welfare abuse has surfaced: The use of EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) cards to purchase pot.
Colorado issues its EBT in the form of a Quest card.
While some argue that safeguards are in place to prevent food stamp cards from being used to purchase anything other than foods, a check of the Boulder City government website says youcan use your Quest card to withdraw cash from an ATM, which is what is happening at several Denver-area pot shops equipped with these money machines.
It’s an obvious abuse of taxpayer funds that for now is legal in Colorado.
Truly, God commands us to take care of the poor and the widows. That is Christian charity.
But There Are Those Who Need Genuine Help
There are those who are laid off from their jobs through no fault of their own and are earnestly looking for work.
There are those who are disabled and want to work but can’t.
There are those who have worked hard all their lives but now, be it their age, changing technology or lack of modern skills, are shut out of the employment field.
They can’t find work and are desperate; they need food stamps and unemployment benefits to make ends meet until they get back on their feet.
That’s totally understandable.
But what about those who refuse to take a job because they feel it is beneath them or that it doesn’t pay enough to suit their tastes?
Why work two part-time jobs when you can collect more from the government?
Work ethics say a lot about our relationship with God. If you are not working, is it because you cannot get a job or don’t want one? If you are working, what is your attitude towards your job?
Perhaps it’s a feeling of frustration with life that translates into “the government owes me a living.”
No matter the reasoning, there are those who don’t want to pull the cart.
They want to ride in the cart and have the rest of the work force do the pulling.
And that cart is overloaded.
Not wanting to work or having a bad attitude at work is not what God wants for you.
If you are a Christian and count yourself among those in the cart and you are able to work, you had better do some soul-searching.
“A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” (Proverbs 10:4)
Your attitude towards work says a lot about your attitude towards God.
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” (Colossians 3:23)
A Valuable Lesson For You About Work
I learned a valuable lesson over the years. I don’t work for a company, I work for Jesus.
Before my recent retirement, I didn’t always like my job, but I went to work in the mornings to a job where Jesus is the Chairman of the Board.
Jesus is the boss. That is my attitude.
I had not called in sick in at least 5 years. I didn’t take “mental days” off. I started work about 20 minutes early.
I prayed that God would see me through the tough spots and thanked Him for the less crazed moments.
Today, I work a part-time job and have the same attitude. Work as if unto the Lord.
My reward? I have been able to enjoy the fruits of my labor, just as God intended, and I have been working since I was 13.
I have found you cannot separate the two – work and God – because they are intrinsically connected to who you are as a Christian.
Your work ethic is part of your Christian walk.
How you view work and how you handle your job speaks volumes to others about your Christianity.
How would you rate your work ethics? Would you hire you?
Are you the kind of worker a boss swears by … or at?
Unfortunately today, not many are willing to acknowledge Jesus as the Chairman of the Board at their job.
My father was from the Old Country. He used to tell us kids, “You can have anything you want in America … but you have to WORK for it.”
No matter Dad’s faults, he instilled in us a strong work ethic.
During a rough patch between jobs, my Dad mowed lawns. He was an immigrant. He never had the attitude of “Where’s mine?”
He never thought the government owed him a living. He worked. We never went hungry.
Although my parents were not Christians, God provided out of his love and abundance. I believe He honored my Dad’s work ethics.
“You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.” (Psalms 128:2)
As the Bible says:
“In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.” (Proverbs 14:23)
Through work we meet our needs, the needs of our families and the needs of others, all spokes in the big wheel of life.
Our work grows the economy, raises taxes, pays wages, and through that we are able to support the church and help the poor.
Whether you are looking for a job or trying to make the most of the one you have, remember you have a friend you can always talk to.
You have a Chairman of the Board who is never too busy to take your call.
I have learned about the politics of the Romans and Israelites over the years. Politics are a part of life, it has been happening since Adam and Eve. It’s the natural order of leadership, workers and non-workers.
Politics are at the center of the story of Jesus. His historical life ended with a political execution. Crucifixion was used by Rome for those who systematically rejected imperial authority, including chronically defiant slaves and subversives who were attracting a following. In the world of Jesus, a cross was always a Roman cross.
So also the heart of his message was political: it was about the coming of “the kingdom of God.” These are the first words of Jesus in Mark, the earliestGospel, an advance summary of what the Gospel and the story of Jesus are about (Mark 1:14-15). Of course, Jesus’ message was also religious: he was passionate about God and what God was like. That passion led him, in his teaching and actions, to proclaim the kingdom of God.
In his world, “kingdom” language was political. Jesus’ hearers knew about other kingdoms—the kingdom of Herod and the kingdom of Rome (as Rome referred to itself in eastern parts of the empire). The kingdom of God had to be something different from those kingdoms.
The kingdom of God is for the earth. The Lord’s Prayer speaks of God’s kingdom coming on earth, even as it already exists in heaven. It is about the transformation of this world—what life would be like on earth if God were ruler and the lords of the domination systems were not.
If Jesus had wanted to avoid the political meaning of kingdom language, he could have spoken of the “family” of God, or the “community” of God, or the “people” of God. But he didn’t: he spoke of the kingdom of God.
It would be a world of economic justice in which everybody had the material basics of existence. And it would be a world of peace and nonviolence. Together, economic justice and peace are “the dream of God”— God’s passion for a transformed world.
Jesus’ passion for the kingdom of God created conflict with the authorities. His public activity began after the arrest of his mentor, John the Baptizer, by the Rome-appointed ruler of Galilee (Mark 1:14). Conflict dominates his story throughout the Gospels and climaxes in the last week of Jesus’ life with his challenge to the authorities in Jerusalem and his crucifixion.
Jesus also used political means, most dramatically in two public political demonstrations. First, his preplanned entry into Jerusalem on a donkey symbolized a kingdom of peace in which the weapons of war would be banished. Second, he publicly indicted the temple as “a den of robbers” because it had become the center of collaboration with Roman imperial rule and taxation (Matt 21:13,Mark 11:17, Luke 19:46).
Jesus’ passion for the kingdom of God led to his passion in the narrower sense of the word: his arrest, suffering, and death. This is the political meaning of Good Friday. Easter also has a political meaning: it meant that God said yes to Jesus’ passion for a transformed world and no to the powers of domination that killed him. Of course, Good Friday and Easter have more than a political meaning—but not less.
I have often been asked what order I was in amongst the children in our family. I get strange responses when I say a middle child. Why? Because I don’t fit the profile. So, today I decided to research more about Birth Order to understand what those knowledgeable on the subject were referring to.
After reading many article, I felt that this chart covered most of the inherent qualities.
How does this chart explain your birth order?
Right on?
So Wrong?
A mixture of other orders as well?
I learned there are many variables that affect birth order. According to Parent Magazine and the subject of birth order, blended families, twins, large gaps between children and adopted children will not fall into these natural tendencies.
What other things influence personalities? Many I presume. Nature and Nurture interacting is a constant topic in our household. Is it in our child’s DNA or influenced by his life experiences and his environment?
What about peers vs. sibblings vs. parents? Some studies show that sibblings play the biggest role. Other experts will say that peers have the most influence, which is the case of an only child. Most all agree that parents play a large role in the child’s personality. The primary caregiver in the first years will be the parent the child is most attached to according to other research.
What about the zodiac signs, how the stars aligned at birth and other variables? All this may play a part in whom a person becomes but I found the birth order and interesting subject to pursue.
The word itself makes some shake in their shoes. Why is it that math frightens some so much? Check this Algebra worksheet out. Do you feel better about Algebra now?
Helpful Hint: Make anything with a subtraction sign RED. A positive and a negative make a zero!
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Call it tough love. God’s tough love.
Our country’s Judeo-Christian values and work ethics are quickly being eroded by a nationwide Nanny State belief system where government wants to take care of us from cradle to grave.
No matter the reasoning, there are those who don’t want to pull the cart.
