Curbelo, Isabella: Beloit List

Today's higher educational objectives are followed by a challenge-- the gap that has been created between incoming freshman and older professors. This unintentional disparity came as our world advanced socially, technologically, and economically, and this disparity left little room for that essential connection between some faculty and students.
   
Socially, the world, even over the last 20 or 30 years, has transformed itself tremendously. For young students, MTV has never been music television, but rather it's source for reality TV. The faculty grew up watching actual music videos. Some older faculty members remember when women couldn't vote, or even get degrees in some areas of study.  Today's students have not only experienced equality of gender, but don't remember desegregation laws. Even though some faculty grew up in an unequal and segregated America, they are forced to ignore that aspect of their past and to give all students equal opportunity. Though this is not a huge problem in most college environments, some students cannot fathom this controversial issue. The striking variation in the childhoods among professors and students hinder them from fully engaging in the learning experience, creating a stumbling block for personalized higher education. Incoming freshman and older faculty must work very hard to compensate for the generation gap.
   
This generation gap has been most affected by technology. The last few classes of incoming freshmen cannot recall a time when there wasn't an Internet, and surely cannot recall when the Internet wasn't a major online tool. The older faculty, however, can remember when they couldn't use calculators in their math class, or when computers took up a whole room. Now, iPhones are computers the size of one's hand. Because of technology, many older generation faculty cannot make a connection with students. Because technology and education go hand in hand, this disconnection slows the education process by not fully engaging the attention of the tech-savvy students, and places obstacles between faculty and their technologically advanced teaching tools. Also, many faculty can remember when there were no cell phones, and when TVs were a big deal to have in one's home. Viewing the students, faculty observe a generation that has a mental and physical addiction to text messaging and to reality TV―an addiction they can't imagine. However, from the students' perspective, the older faculty just can't keep up with the world. In a positive light, many faculty have taught themselves to use technology in order to keep up with the latest advancements; most faculty recognize this as the only way to move forward in education.
  
Increasing the generation gap in higher education even more are the tremendous economic background differences between the young and old. Most of the older faculty grew up in the days of hardship―when people only lived on necessities. Times were hard and luxury, in most cases, was not an option. Contrastingly, today's generation grew up in a world that spent more than it made. Luxury became necessity. The accumulation of material things has taken over the lives of young people: laptops, iPads, iPhones, GPS, and television are now “needs” these young people have, not desires.  Although this may not reflect directly on education it has some indirect effects. The lives of young people contrast directly with the lives of the elder faculty when they themselves were young; therefore, there's a connection between them that fails. Some faculty and students cannot pass through the enormous background divergences to create the impact that is essential to education.
   
Similarly, new students and older faculty share the same goal―to engage together by connecting their past worlds and present endeavors to immerse themselves into a world of challenges, knowledge, and experiences. These challenges, knowledge, and experiences create  what we know as higher education.
   
“The Mindset List: 2011.”
            http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2011