"Figuring out young people has always been a chore, but today it's also an industry. Colleges and corporations pay experts big bucks to help them understand the fresh-faced hordes that pack the nation's dorms and office buildings. As in any business, there's variety as well as competition. One speaker will describe youngsters as the brightest bunch of do-gooders in modern history. Another will call them self-involved knuckleheads. Depending on the prediction, this generation either will save the planet, one soup kitchen at a time, or crash-land on a lonely moon where nobody ever reads."
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Today's Youth: Bright Do-Gooders or Shallow Narcissists?
Check out this lengthy article titled "The Millennial Muddle" from the Chronicle of Higher Education. It discusses how stereotyping students has become a thriving industry-- and a bundle of contradictions. In academia, pretty much anything can become an industry.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
If, as you say, in academia "pretty much anything can become an industry," I'm not sure what the problem is. Should not the academy emulate the "success" and methods and strategies of the corporate world? Are we to believe that the university is not a corporate entity of sorts? Is this particular strategy--the one outlined in the Chronicle--much different from the ones employed by typical marketing and advertising firms? I think the problem is not that the university is striving to sell what it has to offer; rather, the problem might lie in WHY it is that universities are forced to resort to this kind of corporate behavior. Who are the consumers that drive them to behave in such an allegedly despicable manner?
Good point.
Post a Comment