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The New Millennial University Student

• Students enter college having a greater exposure to and more experimentation with 'grown-up' activity than any previous generation.
• Students receive extensive and rapid exposure to a vast and ever increasing level of informational activity, which makes them the most informed generation to have lived on the planet. However, although students have more general knowledge, they come to our campuses with less experience in exercising the discipline and focus required to explore a subject in depth. In other words, quantity of information is not coincident with depth and quality of experience, qualities that may have greater value in life attainments.
• Social connection and intimacy are taking on different patters as students are less likely to be paired off in couples and more likely to participate in group activities, have brief intimate encounters, and experiment with many living options before settling down into an adult pattern.
• Emotionally, students are experiencing increasingly high levels of stress and anxiety.
• Students today are on the cutting edge of technological proficiency, and in most cases they are beyond their parents, teachers and potential bosses.
• More students are taking part-time employment during college, while their commitment to school work appears to be diminished.
• Students are ambitious in their career aspirations yet frequently have unrealistic expectation about whit it takes to achieve these goals.
• Students are well aware of campus and community rules, regulations, and political correctness. These rules are frequently perceived without personal or moral commitment, so that the challenge for students is to find a way around the rule, create the right appearance by hiding unapproved behaviour, and live by a philosophy such as 'cheating is OK if you do not get caught."
• Many students do get involved in political activity and community service projects, but do so within a circle of influence that is familiar and connected to their local interests.

Having an influence on the millennial student

• Faculty and staff may need to recognise that students are already different in their attitudes and behaviour as a result of the social and technological revolution.
• A campus must still offer deliberate classroom and out of class opportunities for student personal awareness and exploration to take place.
• The information revolution has created the need to reduce pressure on students to accumulate a personal knowledge base and instead emphasise the development of process tools for information retrieval.
• Students need to have skills to manage their daily life.
• Campuses need to provide opportunities for students to explore the meaning and purpose of their life activity.
• We need to understand, nourish and find ways to influence the peer culture.
• Understand and utilise how students are affected by what they perceive as the normative behaviour of their peers in the social environment.
• Finally, it is important for all educators, including both Faculty and staff, to recognise how we model what is important and valued as higher learning to students.

From: Newton, F. B. (2000) The New Student About Campus 5:5 pp 8-15

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