Generational tension in higher education

Recognition of generational change is usually spurred by key catalytic events that end up defining the experience of those in a new generation. The post WWII "baby boomers" were influenced by the exodus from a world war coupled with a seismic population explosion, growth of a middle class, and a move to the suburbs. The current Millennial Generation has been defined by 9-11, being the first digital natives, and uncertainty in career prospects when they graduated from college. Such distinctions by roughly 20 year increments are challenged as lacking relevance and in some cases contributing to simplistic thinking.

The current generation of college students, born in the early 2000s, were grade schoolers during the trauma of a near depression that exposed business, church, and government corruption. They weren't quite ready to vote in 2016 when a populist demagogue captured the White House but in 2020 they helped defeat him for a second term. And, they were closed down by a pandemic at a time when their youthful energies would typically have been unleashed. All of these potentially impact what college students expect of their teachers.

The 1960s brought a number of very significant changes to U.S. higher education, creating a mix of "complex and contradictory legacies" as Steve Mintz wrote. Mintz previously looked at names and how they have changed in the current generation to discern the more important differences that define this generation. As Karl Mannheim described in 1928 in the Problem of Generations, the character of age cohorts is "defined by its values, aesthetics, and sensibility in opposition to its elders." In a follow-up article, Mintz explored an additional difference that characterizes many of the current generation of students - their longer and more complicated journey to adulthood. The passage to adulthood also includes class differences that must be recognized, with privileged students' lives still resembling the intriguing stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and less privileged looking more like the lives of the Williams sisters in the recently released movie, King Richard.

Herein lies the challenge of an aging professoriate facing students of the new generation - baby boomers, with some Millennials and Generation X mixed in, relating to a new generation which has yet to secure a predictable name. Mintz recommends that in these times of potential generation tension that academics take the time to cultivate ways of relating that include; respect, understanding, support, flexibility, and open mindedness. A core issue in bridging generational tensions is students' sense of "being seen" or believing that institutional staff understand them. Nearly two-thirds of students report the most direct connection with faculty, with somewhat fewer believing they are acknowledged by student affairs and other administrators. Which students are "seen" differs by demographic and socio-economic background. Deeper analysis of the Student Voice data was used to formulate 10 ways to strengthen connections with students.

Mintz quoting Randolph Bourne, "Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established... (and) turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem." The times they are a-changing... and it scares many of the elders. But why should they fear when the evidence is that to thrive we must be reborn to a new age with new challenges and opportunities? That's why this generation should be called the Resilients or Passionates.