Future Anxiety and its Relationship to Students' Attitude toward Academic Specialization

Abstract

Future anxiety is considered one of the main features as a result of economic and social changes, and increasingly emerges among university students not only because of the fear of failure in the study, but also because of the fear of lack of job opportunities – the thing that affects joining their specializations. Hence this study examines the relationship between future anxiety and specialization in the light of variables of gender and specialization. The sample consists of 380 males and females at Najran University (200 students in Humanities and 180 students in Scientific specializations), and their age ranged between 18 to 22 years. The two scales of future anxiety and specialization have been applied. The results showed a negative correlation between future anxiety and specialization, and there are differences in future anxiety for students of Humanity specializations, and gender differences in favor of males; the study also resulted in differences in the attitude towards specialization in favor of students of scientific specializations that have no differences due to gender.

Keywords: future anxiety, attitudes, specialization and university students