Caring for the Me Generation

During the past semester, a time where I constantly felt split between my academic life and my civic life, I became acutely aware of an attitude among undergraduates that perplexed me. I tried writing about it , describing what readers pointed out (in a far more articulate manner than I'd managed) was a notable lack of empathy among some students.

Since I've spent the last 10 years trying to make convince higher education institutions to prioritize their students' needs and desires, these realizations about who some of the students seemed to be and especially what they seemed to believe, made me pretty depressed. Don't get me wrong: it's not that I expect students to speak and act in one voice--far from it, given how much I value the democratic process. I don't want them to share my opinions or perspectives, but rather simply want them to formulate opinions and perspectives after asking good questions and gathering and evaluating information. But what I hope for, most of all, is their recognition that they are part of a worldwide community of students, and their strength lies in that community. I hope that such a larger sense of the world will guide them to think of more than themselves, and to act for the greater good.

Of course, what I learned from social media engagement this spring is what the Me Generation is really all about. "Me."

As it turns out, this is not at all a Wisconsin phenomenon. There's rigorous research from the University of Michigan demonstrating a sharp decline in empathy among undergraduates, based on data from 14,000 students over 30 years. Compared to students who attended college 20-30 years ago, undergraduates in the first decade of the new millenium scored 40% lower in empathy. Said one of the study's authors, this group is among the "most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history."

The authors speculate as to the root causes, citing among other things the influence of media and social media in particular. But those are worldwide phenomena, and this is a U.S. study (I strongly suspect such trends aren't felt in many other countries). Instead, I'm betting that we have Ronald Reagan to thank. The undergraduates of the 1970s and 1980s were raised by parents who came of age under the New Deal, during times when social justice and civil rights for all were demanded and (to some degree) received. They were more often raised to appreciate the luck and good fortune that gave opportunities to them, and worked to share those opportunities with others. Not so for the undergraduates of the 2000s, whose parents came into adulthood under the Gipper, a period in which inequality blossomed, and consumption was conspicuous. They've never known a time when college wasn't insanely expensive, always assumed that the American Dream was only about individual effort, and they were listening as even the Democrats placed all of the blame for poverty at the feet of the poor (yes, I'm looking at you Bill Clinton).

Reversing this trend is absolutely necessary for ensuring the well-being of people everywhere. As the Michigan researchers noted, what accompanies an exclusive emphasis on oneself is a "corresponding devaluation of others." Such a condition tears at the web of our social life and creates conditions of anomie that increase the spread of poverty and perpetuate hatred and fear like that evidenced in recent events in Norway.

So, start now. Take this quiz created by the Michigan researchers and see how YOU compare to those undergrads they surveyed. Then decide what to do with your results.


ps. In case you are curious, I scored a 59/70, meaning more empathetic than 80% of the study's participants. Thanks Poppa.

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The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Once upon a time, college students could pay their tuition with a mix of family support, financial aid, and perhaps a little work. Today, family support and aid are woefully inadequate for a broad swath of undergraduates, and full-time work is common.

Is working while in college truly necessary? Are the earnings used for academic expenses related to postsecondary education, or are they frittered away on life's pleasures? Since a handful of studies indicate a negative association between working long hours and rates of degree completion, these questions have taken on broader significance.

Unfortunately, few studies track students' income and expenditures in systematic ways. To better understand spending patterns, and attempt to tease out the reasons for those patterns, one would ideally have longitudinal data collected for a large sample of students, and complemented by in-depth interviews with a sub-sample of students to delve more deeply into the reasons underlying decisions, and validate the measures employed. Now true confession: Together with Doug Harris, I am conducting just such a study right now, the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study. But that's not why I'm writing this-- we don't yet have data to report on.

But apparently someone else does. A few weeks ago, a news outlet reported the headline "Will Work for Beer," covering the release of a new study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, published in the Journal of Population Economics. In that study the authors used national cross-sectional data and determined that the earnings students make from work are not enough to replace contributions from their parents, or cover tuition costs. According to the report, "We test several hypotheses regarding the financial motives for and academic effects of college student employment and find empirical support for the hypothesis that a decrease in parental transfers increases the work hours of four-year college students. We also find that an increase in the net price of schooling increases the number of hours worked by both four-year and two-year college students."

Ok. So the decision to work may have something (but not everything) to do with how much support parents provides and how expensive college is. Unsurprising. Not particularly newsworthy.

But the lead author didn't stop there. Instead, she waded into popular stereotypes about college students, telling the reporter that the results mean that the drive to work isn't coming from a need to really make ends meet-- instead, "students...work to have ‘beer money,' money for entertainment, money to pay other expenses, just not their tuition."

Huh?

Her conclusion took a gigantic interpretive leap from her data. Notably, it's not a conclusion found anywhere in the actual research paper. All her evidence suggests is that students' work isn't generating income equivalent to parental contributions or in line with college costs. This could mean many things, including that students have a hard time finding enough work to generate sufficient earnings. Of course it suggests they likely need to find other ways to make ends meet-- including loans. But it says nothing about what they use their work earnings for, how they prioritize expenses, what they go without, etc. With her statement to the press, the author did little more than simply impute meaning to meaningless results.

Why mention "beer money"? It's not uncommon for an academic paper to simply say what it shows-- and conclude that while we need to know more about explanations for patterns in the data, we just don't have the information in the dataset to tell us what we need to know. Why step outside those bounds, and lend fodder to the fire? In what way is this helpful-- to policymakers, to students, or frankly, to anyone?

Working students are often struggling students. There's good qualitative evidence on this, even if the quantitative evidence isn't yet available. Professors dislike them because they tend to fall asleep in class, having been up serving on the graveyard shift instead of studying. Their classmates often don't know them well, since student-employees have little time left for socializing. Their grades are lower than average, their stress levels high, and their chances of degree completion relatively low. So why do we feel the need to minimize their need to work, to mock them for it, to enforce a stereotype that their earnings are spent at bars? It seems nothing less than classist-- in the absence of providing students with sufficient financial supports to make working during college truly optional, we try and make ourselves feel better by telling stories that students work not out of true financial need, but rather a desire to imbibe.

Maybe that helps some fraction of folks sleep at night, but I seriously doubt it's grounded in any kind of truth.

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