More than two thirds of students get lost in difficult situations. This lack of resilience translates into professional and life instability for young adults. Management specialists call for education to put emphasis again on independence and long-term planning.
– The main problem among some of the young generation is the ability to build lasting relationships. The second thing is related to skill enduring frustration while performing tasks. A quite important element is the sense of meaning in what I do, that my work brings some good, either to the organization or to the community in which I live.. Issues related to finances are slightly less important than for adults who have children and families to support, it is known that the issue of financial autonomy is crucial there – says Tomasz Rowiński from the Department of Managerial Accounting at the Warsaw School of Economics in an interview for the Newseria agency. – In the case of the younger generation, who now leave home much later, around the age of 30, work issues look a bit different.
According to Eurostat data from 2024, the age at which young Poles leave the family home is on average 26.7 years and is only slightly higher than the average for the European Union (26.2).. However, data on connections with the parents' household indicate that in Poland over 65 percent people aged 25-29 still live with their parents or use their household income or contribute to it. Eurostat indicates that Poland, along with Croatia, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Greece and Ireland, is one of the countries where over 80 percent people in the 16-29 age group depend on their parents' household income.
Data from the Central Statistical Office indicate that the median age for newlyweds in 2024 will be 32 years for men and 29.8 years for women. In the case of both sexes, it is five or six years more than in 2000.
– The thesis is often put forward that young people do not earn enough to buy a house and start a family. The thesis that young people are not interested in buying their own house, taking on their own responsibility, establishing a lasting family and lasting relationships is equally well-founded, and that is why it looks like this – comments Tomasz Rowiński.
As the expert emphasizes, this may be related to how education and Polish schools have changed in recent years.
– The school has somewhat lost the thread of the so-called positively frustrating the student, that is, making him face difficulties and motivating him to change his approach. If I experience a failure, I can work through it, move on and not repeat it, i.e. change the way I function so that another failure does not occur. The abolition of homework has an additional negative effect – there is no motivation for me to change my attitude towards learning, to devote more to learning at home in order to achieve better results at school. The so-called mechanism positive student frustration, i.e. setting the appropriate bar and requirements, has disappeared from Polish education – says the expert.
Frustration is necessary in a child's development because it allows them to cope with various difficulties later in life – it teaches them how to deal with emotions, builds mental resilience, and develops motivation and perseverance.
According to the “Young Heads” report, commissioned by the Unaweza Foundation among a group of over 180,000 people. Polish students show that a large number of them have a sense of agency below average. They declare that they cannot find solutions to difficult situations: they “lose their heads” (67.4%), do not know what to do (53.8%) or expect failure (44.1%). Less than one in five respondents (18.3%) admitted that they found positive solutions to difficult situations. The report indicates that a low sense of agency corresponds to low self-esteem and translates into various areas of a young person's functioning, including coping with the demands of education, school motivation and school achievements.
Problems identified at an early stage have an impact on the future
– If such an employee goes to a corporation in a big city, which is a bit different than in a small town, where he goes to a small company that employs manual or service workers, the problem may be bigger – says Tomasz Rowiński. – We need to introduce elements related to feedback and openness to school. Try to teach students that failure is not the end of life, that they have an influence on the results they achieve, that we see these results and give feedback and reward.
According to a report conducted by LiveCareer on a group of over 1.3 thousand people show that people under 25 years of age change jobs most often. 41 percent of those who changed jobs did it every 1-2 years, 17 percent – every few months. For 38 percent of all respondents who changed employers at least once, the main motivation for the change was the need to escape from the workplace, preceded by long-term frustration. Among people under 25 years of age, this percentage was 53%.
