Oh wow...

Beloit, Wis. –

Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow.
Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.

The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.

Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.

For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail
3. Los Angelinos have always been trying to get along
4. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo
5. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities
6. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet
7. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis
8. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry
9. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation
10. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause
11. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways
12. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection
13. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess
14. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone
15. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed
16. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn
17. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars
18. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks
19. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides
20. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive
21. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day
22. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum
23. Czechoslovakia has never existed
24. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen
25. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always been an alternative to hospitals
26. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall
27. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones
28. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics
29. American companies have always done business in Vietnam
30. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs
31. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station
32. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church
33. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties
34. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife
35. Beethoven has always been a dog
36. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine
37. The US, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely
38. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus
39. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church
40. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court
41. The Post Office has always been going broke
42. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping
43. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing
44. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi Channel
45. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis