A Functionalist View of College: Manifest and Latent Functions

The functionalist perspective of sociology emphasises on the way that different aspects of society operate in order to maintain social stability. Colleges and universities across the United States attract millions of high school graduates each year, promising a great education for the next four years. The manifest funciton of a University is to broaden a student’s educational horizons and to certify thier knowledge in a concrete and verifyable manner. This is often manifested by a degree, cumulative grade point average, and other academic honors.

These are the main reasons that colleges exist, but what are the latent funcions of colleges and universities?

Why do so many students really shell out twenty thousand dollars a year or more?

One of the most readily given answers for why students go to college is the promise of a better job when they graduate with their degree. This function of college is so obvious that it may not even be able to qualify as a latent function. If, as many college students say, they attend college for the job they get upon graduating, then getting a good job would be its manifest function from the perspective of the student. Only if the student studied a topic for the sake of learning would the education be the main function of college, and that is most likely not the case for a majority of students.

One of the main latent functions of college is the social aspect. College is widely seen in popular culture as a nonstop party where students can make lifelong friends and have casual sexual encounters without consequence. For many students, college is a period of extended adolescence which is not allowed by the alternative lifestyle of beginning work immediately after high school. Many students also use college as a way to meet a long term mate from among people in the same social economic class. Many people may not admit to going to college to find a future spouse but this is often the end result.

The question is, if students weigh colleges by so many non-academic qualities, is this the best way to go about choosing an expensive institution of education? If not, maybe students should pick their school based on education alone and look outward for social fulfullment. If so, should colleges focus less on the marketing of their academics and more on the social, athletic, and other functions to potential students?

Source: http://www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Mission.html