A Sociological Study of Academic Alienation: A Case Study of Mazandaran University

Academic alienation, as one of the alienation forms, is a concept that explains the process of separation of the students from learning and isolation from an academic or university group to which a student should belong or be a member. The main objective of the present paper is to analyze the academic alienation of the students of Mazandaran University and its dimensions within and outside the university fields on the basis of Bourdieu’s incompatibility) Hysteresis) theory. The necessary data were collected through questionnaires developed by the researcher. 390 students of the Mazandaran University in 2014-2015 academic year were selected through classified sampling method and questionnaires were distributed among the respondents. The findings show that the inner university field (restricting norms, weak educational sociability and relational disorder) as well as the outer university field (employment ambiguity, thirst for getting a degree, crisis of status and lack of interest in study) have positive and direct impacts on the dependent variable (academic alienation). Also based on the theoretical model test, which was carried out through structural equations modelhng, it was found that the inner and outer university fields along with their indicators could explain 66 percent of the variations in academic alienation.