September 30, 2003
Millennials Go to College
This afternoon, I attended an open General Assembly at SHU, where Director of Admissions Mary Kay Cooper presented a well-delivered demographic snapshot of today's entering college students, drawn largely from the booklet, Millenials Go To College by Neil Howe and William Strauss. We were given seven core traits of students who meet this demographic (essentially, those born on or after 1982). They are: special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured, and achieving.
There is much more complexity to them than this, of course, but it can't hurt, I suppose, to try to nail down how to work with the unique qualities of this generation. Although I am always uncomfortable about the fuzzy boundaries between "target marketing" and "sociological demographics," it is true that all generations are shaped by their times, so I do give a lot of credence to what was presented today. There's a super article online about this (but in .pdf format, unfortunately) called "Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millenials: Understanding The "New Students" by Diana Oblinger (Microsoft's Edu Guru) available at The Society for College and University Planning and EDUCause. Further researching this topic this evening online has opened my eyes quite a bit; or at least, given me some ways of compartmentalizing phenomena that I already have noticed. And I found good data attesting to how technologically savvy today's students really are (as if it weren't already obvious). Oblinger's data reports, for example, that 84% of Millennials own their own computer. And they're all tapped into e-mail, which is nothing "high tech" to them at all. 75% of all students use e-mail to get clarity on an assignment from a professor. 55% use it to set up live meetings. But only 19% of Millennials report contacting professors via e-mail MORE than face-to-face. (Still, that's one out of five!!!)
I also found some millennials themselves arguing about all this on a discussion board. (How millennial of them!)
But far beyond trends and demographics are the implications of the "information age mindset" (Jason Frand) that is rapidly developing among today's students due to their immersion in technology and the sea of info they must try to navigate and swim in to try to make sense of their world. An emphasis on "Doing, rather than knowing" (.pdf link) seems to be the paradigm for this generation, who expect rewards, feedback, and structure and appreciate collaborative work that produces solutions. At the same time, the Millennials seem to oversimplify the complexities of the world -- they want push-button solutions and are adverse to the complexity of reality, they side with simplicity rather than creativity, and -- scariest of all -- groupmind rather than independent critical thinking.
Today's college students are younger than the personal computer. I think that says it all.
You have to take a fish out of water to make it see that it is in the water. That's one of my goals: to give students that outside perspective, even if it isn't comfortable or predictable. Although knowing these demographics ostensibly should give me a way of comforting and working with the Millennials, it also makes me aware that they are less prepared for the "reality" of life after college than previous generations. As a teacher of creative writing and critical theory, I will be facing more and more resistence and the onus will be on me (and other teachers of liberal arts) to "liberate" students from their own blindnesses, even as we support and encourage them in their unique way of seeing.
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Comments
If I recall the evaluation form correctly, one of the thinigs that SHU students evaluate their professors on is whether they did small-group activities. That's one item on a long list of techniques. Of course, some courses lend themselves to group work more than others. But there it is, given equal weight alongside more traditional methods such as lecture and discussion. That would probably tend to encourage more profs to do it.
Donna, do you dislike small groups in general (say, when the prof divides the class into small groups to discuss readings, and then report their findings to the whole class), or is your ire more towards getting a group grade?
I find that groups of two students are much more successful than groups of three or more, and I even put it into my syllabus that in order to do a technical writing project in a group of three, you have to write me a memo explaining how you will avoid groupthink -- no person wants to voice any objection that will make the whole group have to do any more work, and the longer the other two people stay silent, the more you will, too. Then, when the project falls apart, everyone realizes that they all saw the signs of danger but nobody wanted to be the spoilsport.
I agree that groups of two work better than groups of three or more. My opposition to groups mainly stems from the group grading system for projects. This is more often a problem with larger groups-- for example: I remember a class where there were 6 of us in a group for a major project. When 3 people fall short of their expected workload, the others have to pick up the slack or suffer a bad grade. Most people won't rat out other group members because it feels very childish and they are afraid of being labeled a whining student.
A good solution to avoid this type of situation in groups is for the students to evaluate each person in their group, and in writing explain the role each group member took in the project. I know Dr. A. does this in Creative Writing courses, and it allows each student to get a grade based on what they personally contributed, not on the outcome of the project as a whole.
OK, thanks for the clarification. And good luck in the job hunt!
Being born in 1983, I guess I am a Millenial. I thought we were Gen-Y. Anyway, I'm a student at GW, and a rising senior, and am being bombarded with questions about what I'm going to do after college and If I'm prepared for the "real world."
I have always found this a little insulting, to suggest that those of us who are dependents do no live in the same world as every one else but rahter a protected one. Frankly, all I perceive to be the real world is money. Paying bills and rent, that is. While this is going to suck, and I don't doubt that it sucks, it hardly constitutes its own world.
And I don't think we're group minded. Why do you say that? Just curious.
Having been born in 1981, I guess I'm off the hook for being one of these Millennials that you speak of. But one thing you mentioned struck a chord with me: that Millennials side with "groupmind rather than independent critical thinking." I agree wholeheartedly, but the only people that have the ability to fix that are the professors that incessantly force students to do work in small groups, large groups, medium groups, group projects... it never ends.
I can't remember a class at Seton Hill that focused on independent thinking, and frankly, I would have preferred it. I have become a person that hates group work from having to do it so much. The resentment usually comes from having to work with students that are either not willing to do the work, or aren't at the same educational level (to put it bluntly: The students that slide by the professors with sub-par performance riding on the coattails of their smarter group members).
I think a balance between group and individual work would help these Millennials have a better academic experience. The more studious types would enjoy the ability to assert their individual ideas and not be bothered with all the group work. At the same time, the other students that never contribute anything to group work would be forced to step up to the plate and prove themselves academically.