By Michelle Kung
Beloit College has released its annual “Mindset List,” a compilation of values that are pervasive amongst the current crop of 18-year-olds entering universities. Founded by Ron Nief, now an emeritus director public affairs at Beloit, and Tom McBride, Keefer Professor of the Humanities at the school, the list was originally created to remind faculty of how differently their incoming students view the world. After the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about the duo’s list in 1997, they decided to make the practice an annual affair. The list has even reached the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
While some of the observations are fairly obvious — most 18-year-olds use cell phones and consider snail mail too slow — others are rather striking, such as Nief’s observation that many of the class of 2014 can’t write in cursive because they’ve never learned how, or have never had an occasion to practice their penmanship (”most have been on keyboards since they were toddlers”).
Nief is also amazed at the growth of technology. “I’ve been in higher education for 40-odd years now, and not that long ago, we were still bragging about the fact that our college dorms all had phone jacks,” he says. “Now they’re as prevalent as electricity and in fact, many colleges are starting to pull them out because they’re expensive and no one uses them. Deans tell me they can’t reach students by phone or emails accounts, and have resorted to having RAs putting notes under student’s doors.”
Nief says that the list is compiled by himself and McBride on the basis of research, not polls and surveys. McBride’s job is to read to read through literature, criticism and journals, while Nief goes back to sources like Rolling Stone or Advertising Age to get details about their subjects. Nief also looks at the advertising and marketing directed at his key demo, which often tells him more about his student’s mindsets than anything else.
“In1998, when we did the first list, one one of the main items was that AIDS was always a part of the students’ lives,” he says. “Now, with Magic Johnson surviving it, AIDS became [in their minds] more a problem for poor countries; it’s not seen as the plague of our times.” Rather, autism is for these students what AIDS was for an earlier generation.
To test his observations, Nief says that he like to employ the “blank stare” test: if a student gives him a black stare in response to a question or a prop — like an envelope and a stamp — he knows it’s beyond their generation. Take a look at observations from this year’s Mindset List below and let us know what you think.
For the class of 2014 (i.e., those that were born in 1992):
Al Gore has always been animated.
Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and other the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority… unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.
John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry
Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn
“Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.
J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.
The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
Read the full list at the Mindset page.
