New Kids on the Block
Observations on the Newest Generation of MIT

One of the great pleasures of working in Admissions is that I'm
afforded a bird's eye view of American teenage culture. While
the freshman application has changed little over time and
17-year-olds are always the same in some fundamental ways, the
attitudes, values, and activities of our applicants do change quite
dramatically each decade or so, heralding the arrival of a new
generation. This shift has occurred again and the leading edge of
this newest generation now fills all four undergraduate classes at
MIT. These students are as different from us as we were from our
parents' generation. Their characteristics bode well for society
as a whole, but not necessarily for MIT as it is today. Their
presence will provoke a reevaluation of our purpose and mission and
they will challenge all of us adults to lead them in ways we are not
expecting. They will change MIT as surely as MIT will change them.
And I'm not sure we're ready for them.

The Generations:

First, by way of background, let's consider the different generations
represented at MIT today. A quick comparison of generational
characteristics captures the obvious differences among them. I refer
here to Rocking the Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational
Marketing, Walker Smith and Anne Chirman, '97, which describes four
twentieth-century generations: Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation X and
Millennials. (N.B.: These generalizations are meant to capture the
overall characteristics of the given population, not necessarily all
individuals within it.)

The first group, labeled Matures, includes the World War II generation
as well as the following Silent Generation. Matures, made up of 61.8
million members born between 1909 and 1945, were affected most by the
key markers of the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the
GI Bill. As a result, the key characteristics of this group are team
work, commitment, sacrifice, discipline, financial and social
conservatism. (They are also known to the following generation as "The
Establishment.") Most of the senior administration at MIT is made up
of Matures.

Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are the largest single
generation in US history at 77 million members. They were affected by
Vietnam, TV, Woodstock, Watergate, and, of course, sex, drugs, and
rock and roll.  Boomers are characterized by idealism, individualism,
self-improvement, high expectations and an intense self-centeredness.
Most current faculty members are Boomers, as well as a little over
half of all student services administrators, including the Dean of
Admissions.

Generation X, born between 1965 and 1978, is the smallest population
of the four at 52.4 million members. They were at the epicenter of the
cultural meltdown brought about by the Baby Boomers in their effort to
separate from the Matures. As a result, members of this cohort are
characterized by pragmatism, diversity, entrepreneurial spirit, desire
for a high quality of life, savvyness. They were most affected by
AIDS, MTV, PCs, divorce, the Internet. This resourceful and resilient
generation created the dot com phenomenon. Nearly half of student
services administrators are Gen Xers.

Millennials, the newest generation, are the subject of this
article. Born after 1979, they will nearly eclipse the Baby Boomers in
size at just under 77 million members (and growing). The Yankelovich
Report describes their markers as OJ, Monica Lewinsky, and
multi-culturalism. I would add the Columbine shootings to that
list. Key characteristics of this group are neotraditionalism, ritual,
optimism, technological adeptness, volunteerism, busyness.

We can see the presence and the impact of these different generations
at MIT over time in Table #1. As you know, all varsity teams and
activities at MIT have been started by students. The 60% increase in
varsity team offerings between 1970 and 1990 was the direct result of
Title 9 which mandated gender equity in athletic offerings in public
schools. The doubling of MIT clubs between 1980 and 1990 came about as
a result of Gen X students who, used to finding community through
common interests, created a plethora of ECAs (extracurricular
activities), quite a different model of community building from their
Boomer predecessors who connected through larger social movements. The
doubling again of clubs and activities between 1990 and 2000 indicates
the recent presence of the Millennials. Though there is no way to
actually know, I would posit that the number of ECAs carried per MIT
student now is higher than in years past. Millennials, as we shall
see, are extremely busy people.

While I agree with the Yankelovich summary of Millennials, I'd like to
share my own observations of this new generation as seen through the
MIT application process, through the changing trends in the essays,
activities, letters of recommendations, interview reports. I preface
this with the clear understanding that I am discussing MIT applicants
from the US (a specialized group to be sure). I am also generalizing
like crazy, since we are now seeing just the leading edge of this
amazing group, the peak number of which has just entered middle
school.


   They are idealistically pragmatic. Combining the idealism of their
   Boomer parents and the pragmatism of the Gen Xers, these students
   really want to make the world a better place and, most importantly,
   they have a plan.
   
   They are group centered.  As the population with the highest
   percentage of members in day care from an early age, they have
   learned good group skills, how to lead and follow as circumstances
   demand. They spend more time in groups and group activities than
   their predecessors.
   
   They have no problem with authority. These students have been
   raised in relative affluence in peacetime by Boomer parents. Most
   of their free time is spent in adult-supervised activities. They
   have little urge to push back against adults. In fact, they
   actually like adults. This is shocking to both Boomers and Gen Xers
   who still regard authority figures with suspicion, but Matures find
   a certain resonance with them.
   
   They are attracted to large social movements, very much like their
   Boomer parents, but look for ways to make their contributions on a
   local level, more like the Gen Xers. They are expected (even
   required) to volunteer in their communities, working side by side
   with adults who teach them competence and effectiveness.  Consequently, 
   they know how to work the system and they always have a Plan B. Many of 
   our students have already made significant contributions to their 
   communities while still in high school.
   
   They are not as likely to study subjects for the pure pleasure of
   it, not as likely to focus on one thing, because they are the
   busiest students in US history. The majority of my audiences this
   age seem to carry upwards from eight ECAs in high school, in
   addition to a stiff course load. (I wonder when these teens
   actually sleep.) They have essentially been trained to be
   generalists. Consider the tension created when MIT Mature, Boomer
   and Gen X faculty, who are living their passion, teach Millennials,
   who want to learn the material just well enough to get a good grade
   so they can move on to the other 17 activities they have to master
   that day. This has the makings of a classic generation gap.
   
   They desire instant gratification. A member of the Financial
   Services staff remarked recently that these kids "have never heard
   a busy signal." They are used to surfing the Web and they prefer
   Instant Messaging to the phone for the sake of efficiency. (Why
   have a conversation with just one friend when you can speak with 8
   simultaneously?) With Boomer parents who demand top service and
   strive to meet their childrens' every need, these kids expect what
   they want when they want it from all of the adults in their lives.
   
   They may not see or accept the consequences of their
   behavior. Adults are always saving these kids. I see that top high
   school students who fail exams or miss deadlines due to outside
   commitments are regularly protected by their teachers and school
   personnel. Excuses are made, adults blame themselves rather than
   allow the student to accept the painful consequences that previous
   generations knew all too well.  Parents do most of the negotiating
   with admissions offices now, regularly weighing in on every piece
   of the process on behalf of their busy children, taking on an
   almost eerie quality of parent-as-applicant. No surprise that
   students cheat more often, drop activities if they can't win, cut
   corners. Their time is all carved up, given away to multiple and
   competing demands that please adults while the adults in their
   lives race to protect them from failure.


Is MIT a good match for this generation?

In many ways, we are a good match for them. These kids are hard
workers, carrying up to a third more courses in high school than we
did at their age, so the MIT workload isn't as big an issue to
them. They can balance competing demands. MIT is the firehose. They
are diverse and require diversity.  You can't find a more diverse
private university in the US than MIT. They can lead or follow as
required, and there are plenty of opportunities to do both here. They
desire relevant work. We're all about relevance, eschewing ivory
tower. They are intensely busy.  Busy is our middle name.

But in many more ways I worry about the match. First, while these
Millennials are busy, they are "diverse" busy, spreading their
energies over many activities, not the "focused" busy of the classic
Techie, who eats, sleeps, and dreams their passion. They desire
structure when we are all about choice. They don't consider "choice"
to be a value as the Boomers and Gen Xers do. These kids were raised
on the World Wide Web and 90 channels of cable. They do not need 30+
choices of living groups --- they are busy; they just want a
room. You can see the evidence for this attitude in Table #2, the
chart listing the top reasons why admitted MIT applicants chose to
enroll elsewhere. Last year, for the first time, housing and the
quality of the campus, was the #3 reason why the students we worked so
hard to admit went to other schools. This year, the quality of student
life, which includes housing and campus issues, was #2 on that
list. This generation is voting with its feet. The current housing
system with its myriad choices and arcane rules, an artefact of the
Boomer era, is no longer relevant to the students of today. MIT
housing is changing just in time.

Most disturbing to me, though, is that the MIT Millennials, who have
been raised on praise and positive re-enforcement, are in for real
culture shock. They have been groomed to high achievement, feted by
their schools and communities, have starred in USA Today as well as in
their local papers, have been cheered in their games by adults from
both sides. They have nearly all earned at least state level
distinction in something.  Think about that for a second. What would
it have taken to be the state's best something when you were their
age? It is a big deal and they could not have gotten that far without
positive support from the adults in their lives. As we all know, there
is very little of this at MIT, for any of us. These students come to
MIT, ready for us to lead them and position them for the next logical
progression of their lives and they quickly disengage from us because
we do not recognize their specialness. These are not Boomers or Gen
Xers who reacted to this phenomenon by angrily pushing MIT faculty and
administrators away and creating their own islands of support. These
students wonder why we glorify the Big Screw Award, why the only
campus-wide community sentiment is IHTFP, why we tolerate the Tech Is
Hell lifestyle. They wonder why they turned down Stanford to come
here.


Why should we care or try to change?

It is no surprise that I am writing this as Dean of Admissions. Many
faculty who have worked with the Admissions staff and with CUAFA know
well that we are in a tough period in college admissions. Our
competition (Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale) is actively
recruiting our kind of students --- Techies --- at a time when
these students' portfolios are now so balanced they are just as
attractive to liberal arts schools as they are to us. And everywhere
universities are buying top talent. In short, we now have to work
aggressively just to continue to hold our base. To make things worse,
Millennials require a sense of the larger community that can readily
be found at our competitor schools. MIT, with its focus on the
individual, without a sense of campus-wide community, looks pale in
comparison, like an outlier, to these kids.  MIT will need to adapt in
some ways if we are to continue to enroll the best students of our
type in the world.


What they need from us

Millennials need MIT. Despite their good qualities, and there are
many, these stunning young people need to learn to think analytically
and to question more. They need a sense of context to help them sort
through the dizzying mass of information they confuse for
knowledge. And closer to this Boomer's heart, they need to realize
that actions have consequences, so that in the future they will be
less likely to hand over their privacy --- and ours --- for the
sake of efficient consumer service. (They don't call these kids "the
Abercrombie generation" for nothing.)

Whether we acknowledge it or not, we adults at MIT do act "in loco
parentis," playing a major role in the lives of our students. Just as
we expect them to meet our needs regarding deadlines, class
participation, attention to detail, etc., they need specific things
from us in order to thrive here.

   They need to understand the rules. For example, we can't assume
   that they actually know what is considered cheating these days. It
   is possible that they do not realize that pulling something off of
   the Web and not citing the source is a bad thing. I understand that
   cheating cases of this sort have escalated in the past three years
   at MIT, so I encourage you to clearly define your rules at the
   beginning of each semester, describe the repercussions of violating
   your rules and then follow through if violation happens. Remember
   that most adults in their lives cave in to them easily, so they
   will push back hard. Stand firm through all of their excuses and
   whining.  Eventually they will realize that you mean business and
   they'll comply because Millennials generally want to obey the
   rules.
   
   They need to hear about MIT's history and relevance in the world
   and to be reminded why they are here. This is a big one. These
   students know that they are special and they have a sense that MIT
   is, too. Yet, once they arrive on campus, they never again hear
   about why MIT is so famous. I believe that this is one of the
   reasons why generations of bright-eyed MIT students, the best in
   the world, have become disconnected, often cynical, by the end of
   their freshman year. It is not the workload alone, but a total lack
   of inspiration. This past spring I spoke at a leadership seminar on
   campus. One of the students told me, in passing, that he had not
   been doing well in an advanced course taken by many freshmen until
   the professor spent an entire class on the many ways that MIT
   specifically advanced that particular field, describing the
   history, the people, the same labs operational on campus today. The
   student was energized when he realized that he was part of that
   legacy. He saw the relevance of the material. He concluded the
   semester with an "A" and the confirmed desire to become a
   scientist. There is a great lesson here for everyone who teaches at
   this remarkable place. Our competition tells its students that one
   day they will inherit the world as it is. We need to tell our
   students that one day they will fix the world on behalf of the
   others who can't. This is not only the truth. It is the clarion
   call to this generation, the mother ship calling the baby ships
   home. I believe that if we remind our students on a regular basis
   that we fix this world, we do what others think is impossible, we
   "apply science for the benefit of humankind" as MIT was founded to
   do, and they are part of that effort, IHTFP will dissolve within
   five years. And the best of our kind of student will continue to
   come to MIT for another generation.
   
   They need to be involved in decision making, but they need for us
   to make the final decisions. We Boomers in particular have a
   tendency toward consensus even when consensus is
   inappropriate. They don't want us to be friends. They want us to
   lead.
   
   They need praise and positive feedback. At MIT, we put too much
   stock in perspiration and not enough in inspiration. Because we
   think analytically for a living, it is often hard to keep that
   skill, designed for the world of ideas, from spilling into our
   social discourse. We can inadvertently become critical of ourselves
   and of others. These students serve to remind us that we adults
   hold a special responsibility to encourage these future leaders of
   the world with words of kindness as we teach them the ropes.
   
   They need to be allies with us. MIT undergraduates have long
   existed in what I call a Lord of the Flies World in which, without
   adult intervention and engagement, they create their own rules and
   live with more danger than we might imagine. These new students
   will increasingly find this to be unacceptable because they are
   used to alliance with adults. Many of us will need to be more open
   to such alliance opportunities as Millennials enroll in force over
   the next decade.

From my point of view, the future looks bright. If we assume our
natural role as the wise elders of this community during their tenure
at MIT, and if we apprentice them well, the world will be in good
hands with these Millennials. Not only will this huge population of
very hard workers who care about community do good things in their
lives, they will never let Social Security fail. And that should help
us all sleep a lot better tonight.

https://tute.mit.edu/afs/net.mit.edu/project/afs32/athena/org/f/fnl/www/901/marilee_jones.htm