Our colleague Dale Romero reminds us it’s that time of year again: Another crop of college freshmen and their peers are headed away from home and into the world as we know it.
Every year at this time, the Education Department at Wisconsin’s Beloit College reminds the school’s faculty — and the rest of us — what the world looks like for the incoming freshman class. Most of this year’s freshmen were born in 1987.
Highlights culled from this year’s Beloit College Mindset List:
- Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin were always dead (not to mention MLK, Jack & Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin).
- "Cut and paste" never relied on scissors, paper, and rubber cement.
- Heart-lung transplants were always possible.
- Most males never learned to tie a necktie.
- Pay-Per-View television was always an option.
- Al-Qaida always existed with Osama bin Laden at its head (though they never heard of either until they were 14).
- Iran and Iraq were never at war with each other.
- Philip Morris always owned Kraft Foods.
- Condoms were always advertised on television (cigarettes never).
- Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker never preached on television.
- Voice mail was always available.
- The U.S. federal budget was always more than a trillion dollars.
- Starbucks was always in business.
- Money put saved the year they were born earned almost 7% interest.
- Bill Gates was always worth a billion dollars or more.
- Southern fried chicken, prepared with a blend of 11 herbs and spices, was always available in China.
- The Starship Enterprise always looked old school.
- America’s Funniest Home Videos was always on television.
- Pixar was always in business.
- American Motors never existed.
- Police were always able to search people’s garbage without a warrant.
- Contracts with surrogate mothers were always legal.
- RU486, the "morning after pill," was always on the market.
- British Airways was always privately owned.
- Snowboarders always shared the slopes with skiers.
- They never saw the space shuttle Challenger fly.
- Black Americans were always mainly known as African-Americans.
- Digital cameras always existed.
- Tom Landry never coached the Dallas Cowboys.
- Time Life and Warner Communications were never separate companies.
- CNBC was always on the air.
- They never saw a Howard Johnson’s with 28 ice cream flavors.
- Jimmy Carter was always an elder statesman.
The Beloit College Mindset List carries extra freight for business leaders, managers and marketers. If we’re going to recruit and develop young workers -– or sell them stuff — it’s always easier for us to understand their worldviews than for them to understand ours.
The question is whether we have the will to do so. In our view this comes down to responsibility (mentoring, generosity, humility) on one hand, and pure survival on the other. As Eric Hoffer has it:
In time of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Thanks for the reminder Beloit.
