Millennial Students

3. The Incoming Class
Test
2014
Average
2014
Percentile
2013
Average
SATM 509 47th
507
SATCR 530 61st
525
SATW 510 58th
508
SATE 8 8
ACTEN 23 69th
23
ACTM 21 56th
22
ACTR 24 72nd
24
ACTSC 22 63rd
22
ACTC 23 68th
23
GPA 3.38 3.53
RANK 65th
62nd

6. Overview
The generation of Americans born between 1982 and 2000 does
not bowl alone as Putnam would predict; instead, they virtually
bowl on their Wii. They cannot identify five Supreme Court
justices (by name or picture), but they can easily tell you who
Stephen Colbert, Stewie Griffin, and Eric Cartman are. If you
ask them if they voted, many will believe you are referring to
voting for their favorite American Idol superstar. They
understand a sense of community and networks—at least if you
are referring to Facebook or MySpace. They have grown up in
the era where a Blackberry went from a business tool used
mainly by Washington staffers to a key possession of any high
school student. Gone are the days of trips to the library for
academic research and letters delivered through the USPS.
Arrived are days of YouTube videos being posted online before
the event has even concluded and any piece of information
required being available through a cell “phone”.

7. What We Know
• Special, sheltered, confident, team oriented,
conventional, pressured, achieving, rule
followers, well-educated, open-minded,
influential, achievement oriented, used to being
assessed
• Did not wait to college to get out from under
the wings of adults and experiment with matters
such as sex, alcohol, drugs, spending money, or
even different lifestyle options

10. Freshmen Political Lives
• Not alive for Desert Storm
• Experienced Columbine
– In pre-school
• 9/11
• Corruption
• Bitter Campaigns

11. We Live in a Polarized Era

12. Millennial Lives, In General
• Ushered into the 21st century on the wings of
reality television, unlimited text messaging plans,
Facebook, Twitter, Netbooks, and Attention Deficit
Disorder.
• They have witnessed success in a major military
offensive and an airline pilot successfully save a
plane full of passengers on the Hudson River.
• Many have watched their parents get divorced;
nearly as many have experienced a loved one with
cancer; a few have been arrested for sexting.

13. Age and Technology

14. Teaching and Learning with Millennials
• Faculty need to remember these differences
• What worked for their cohort may not work anymore
• Millennials enter college differently
• Want teamwork, experiential activities, structure,
technology
• Want to be led, challenged, to work with friends, to have
fun, to be respected, to have flexibility
• Focused on grades and performance, busy with
extracurriculars, eager to be involved, technologically
talented, interested in math and science compared to
humanities, more politically conservative and socially
liberal

15. The Dumbest Generation?
• Millennials “care about what occurred last week in
the cafeteria, not what took place during the Great
Depression…they heed the words of Facebook,
not the Gettysburg Address.”
• The constant communication amongst their peer
groups has made it so that “equipped with a
Blackberry and laptop, sporting a flashy profile page
and a blog…teenagers pass words and images back
and forth 24/7”
• Can’t trust anyone under 30

16. Paradox
• “We have entered the Information Age,
traveled the Information Superhighway,
spawned a Knowledge Economy, undergone
the Digital Revolution, converted manual
workers into knowledge workers, and
promoted a Creative Class, and we anticipate
a Conceptual Age…yet young Americans
today are no more learned or skilled than
their predecessors.”
• Faculty, in Bauerlein’s opinion, are equally to
blame as he finds them to be too worried
about being labeled as old or reactionary to
challenge today’s students to move beyond
his negative opinions.

17. John Boehner—18.6%

18. Brian Williams—16.4%

19. Carson Daly—68.1%

20. Eric Cartman—78.9%

21. U.S. Senator—47.0%

22. College President—32.8%

23. Homer Simpson—84.2%

24. Judge Judy—91.0%

25. Kim Kardashian—76.8%

26. LeBron James—38.8%

27. Miley Cyrus—86.9%

28. Jay Nixon—31.4%

29. Barack Obama—97.3%

30. John Roberts—23.0%

31. Ryan Seacrest—68.9%

32. Snooki—79.0%

33. Sonia Sotomayor—26.0%

34. Stephen Colbert—43.2%

35. Picture IDs
Politician/Celebrity Percent Identifying Properly
Barack Obama (P) 97.3
Judge Judy (C) 91.0
Miley Cyrus (C) 86.9
Homer Simpson (C) 84.2
Snooki (C) 79.0
Cartman (C) 78.9
Kim Kardashian (C) 76.8
Ryan Seacrest (C) 68.9
Carson Daly (C) 68.1
Claire McCaskill (P) 47.0
Stephen Colbert (C) 42.3
LeBron James (C) 38.8
Kenneth Dobbins (P) 32.8
Jay Nixon (P) 31.4
Sonia Sotomayor (P) 26.0
John Roberts (P) 23.0
John Boehner (P) 18.6
Brian Williams (P) 16.4

36. Unattached!

37. Debt-Ridden!
• Student loan debt, poverty, unemployment,
lower levels of wealth than their previous two
generations at same age
• BUT, 8/10 say they have enough money to lead
the lives they want

38. Single!

39. Diverse!
• 43% non-white

40. Not Trusters!
Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be
trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?
MILLENNIALS: 19%
GEN XERS: 37%
BOOMERS: 40%

41. Conclusion
• Millennials are different
– Just like every generation that has come before us
• There are good and bad things to Millennial
technological capabilities
– Changing nature of community v. new skills
• Is the Millennial generation better/worse than
previous? Or are we trying to compare apples
to oranges?