Acharya, Prashant: Beloit List

Suppose you had been in a coma the last 20 years and woke up today. You might be better off slipping back into it than trying to grasp today’s world. It has altered so much that even Arthur C. Clarke himself could not have imagined the changes.

Communication itself has changed. The words “iPhone” can no longer be used as a noun or a verb like in “I will phone, I have phoned.”  Before you went into a coma, schools had coaches who were just other faculty members teaching Health Science or English but no longer. Now, they are professional coaches whose earnings may approach half of a school’s annual budget. Your family might have paid in cash or check for your medical bills when you were first admitted for your coma but now they pay with a simple swipe of a card.

The Beloit College Mind Set List of the entering freshmen (Internet generation) and Beloit College Mind Set List of Faculty Members Born Before 1980 each identifies the gaping hole in the thinking and way of life between these two generations. The college freshmen of today have always known a place to find the answers to all to the questions: “Google”, unlike those faculty members who had to go through piles of encyclopedias and books to squeeze out an answer.

For today’s freshmen, the days of gender and racial inequality have never existed, one could always surf the Internet to download music for free, people always read their news online, and no one bought the printed version.

Faculty members scratch their heads trying to understand the relevance of the E- Channel, the appeal of Kardashians, and the reality show programs depicting people living their worthless lives. Faculty members also vividly remember the days when C was the average grade students received in courses, because it represented an ancient concept called “satisfactory”.

It might surprise freshmen who have always seen American tax forms available in Spanish, always gone school with classmates named Mohammed and Jesus and always seen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on television to hear faculty members say that "Amazon" once only referred to the largest river on the planet, that they only read books in libraries and never used them as restaurants to Facebook from, and that Russia was once ruled by communists who were the biggest threat to the United States. In the past public schools did not have space available for advertising, nor could people buy nearly anything from just the couches at their house.

“Altar girls? They never have been a big deal” might be the typical response one can expect from these freshmen. Playing games has always included annihilating the enemy soldiers with anything from a pistol to a RPG in Call of Duty. To play basketball or football freshmen don't necessarily need to go outside. To make friends, they don’t have to meet and talk with that person face-to-face. They can always send friend requests using Facebook.

Coffee used to be made by a person at his home every morning not just bought down the street at Starbucks. Entering freshmen have always broken up with their partners via texting. They have always seen women kissing other women on television. They grew up in a world where they believe nurses have always been in short supply.

Faculty members born before 1980 remember a world in which people lived entire days without access to bottled water while for the entering freshmen life has always been very different from that of their professors.