The Effect of College Student’ Employment Anxiety on Academic Involution: The Chain Mediating Role of Academic Stress and Future-oriented Coping

Abstract

Under the background of China’s social and economic transformation and development, the imbalance between supply and demand in the job market and the prominent phenomenon of employment anxiety among college students, coupled with the rapid development of higher education, more and more students are devoting their energy to academics in order to gain more advantages in the job market, which leads to the serious phenomenon of academic involution. Using random sampling, 413 college students were selected for the questionnaire survey. By constructing structural equation modeling, Bootstrap method was used to test the chain mediating role of academic stress and future orientation coping between employment anxiety and academic involution of college students. The results showed that employment anxiety and academic stress differed significantly across genders, with females scoring significantly higher than males; employment anxiety positively predicted academic involution, academic stress and future-oriented coping mediated the chain between college students’ employment anxiety and academic involution, with a mediation effect accounting for 52.8% of the total. The results of the study revealed that it is necessary to implement the employment support policy for college students, solve the problem based on the root cause, help college students establish the awareness of future-oriented coping, avoid the employment risk in advance, adjust the level of their academic pressure, and develop together in a benign competition.