Does college delay real world maturity?
 

Obviously this applies more to the "traditional" student.

But I was wondering if colege actually delays a kind of real world maturity and social sophistication.

If you graduate high school and go straight to a normal four year college it will have meant you went froma very sheltered experience to another sheltered experience. Its almost like being insitutionalized . . . add graduate school and it might be 4 more years until your life takes off into the real world.

The people around you are artifically limited both by age and to a certain degree experiences.

I have noticed on Greekchat that a lot of people speak in terms of "shoulds" as if life has these concrete rules that have to be obeyed. As if things are black and white.


And then I notice some of the people that have been around just shaking their head to it. I have go to run or I would post some examples . . .

Echo Boomer
 

James,


You made me think of an interesting article that I read recently about the Echo Boomer generation - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in646890.shtml


Excerpts:

The largest generation of young people since the '60s is beginning to come of age. They're called "echo boomers" because they're the genetic offspring and demographic echo of their parents, the baby boomers.

Born between 1982 and 1995, there are nearly 80 million of them.
The oldest are barely out of college, and the youngest are still in grade school. And whether you call them "echo boomers," "Generation Y" or "millenials," they already make up nearly one-third of the U.S. population.


From when they were toddlers, they have been belted into car seats, and driven off to some form of organized group activity. After graduating from "Gymboree" and "Mommy and Me," they have been shuttled to play dates and soccer practice, with barely a day off, by parents who've felt their kids needed structure, and a sense of mission.

"They have been heavily programmed. The kids who have had soccer Monday, Kung Fu Tuesday, religious classes Wednesday, clarinet lessons Thursday. Whose whole lives have really been based on what some adult tells them to do," says Levine.

"This is a generation that has long aimed to please. They've wanted to please their parents, their friends, their teachers, their college admissions officers."



Howe thinks they are more like their grandparents, the great World War II generation -- more interested in building things up than tearing them down.

"When you ask kids, 'What do you most hope to achieve there?' Where they used to say, 'I wanna be No. 1. I wanna be the best,' increasingly they're saying, 'I wanna be an effective member of the team. I wanna do everything that's required of me,'" says Howe.


"They are more protected," says Howe. "They regard themselves as collectively special, because of the time in which they were raised."

Why do they consider themselves special?

"Because they came along at a time when we started re-valuing kids. During the '60s and '70s, the frontier of reproductive medicine was contraception," says Howe. "During the '80s and beyond, it's been fertility and scouring the world to find orphan kids that we can adopt. ...The culture looked down on kids. Now it wants kids; it celebrates them."

Echo boomers are the most watched-over generation in history. Most have never ridden a bike without a helmet, ridden in a car without a seat belt, or eaten in a cafeteria that serves peanut butter.

"Sometimes, they don't know what to do if they're just left outside and you say, 'Well, just do something by yourself for a while,'" says Howe. "They'll look around stunned. You know, 'What are we supposed to do now?'"

They're hovered over by what college administrators call "helicopter parents." Protected and polished, they are trophy children in every sense of the word.

"Everyone is above average in our generation," says Summers.

"Everybody gets a trophy at the end of the year. It's something you're used to," adds Gissing. "And you have the rows of trophies lined up on your windowsill, or whatever."

"Parents feel as if they're holding onto a piece of Baccarat crystal or something that could somehow shatter at any point," says Levine. "And so parents really have a sense their kids are fragile. And parents therefore are protecting them, inflating their egos. Massaging them, fighting their battles for them."

Levine, who is considered one of the foremost authorities in the country on how children learn, is now researching a book on young people entering their 20s. He is concerned that groupthink is stifling initiative. And because they have always been rewarded for participation, not achievement, they don't have a strong sense what they are good at and what they're not.

For instance, when a young person shows up for work at his or her first job, what do they expect and what are they finding?

"They expect to be immediate heroes and heroines. They expect a lot of feedback on a daily basis. They expect grade inflation, they expect to be told what a wonderful job they're doing," says Levine.

"[They expect] that they're gonna be allowed to rise to the top quickly. That they're gonna get all the credit they need for everything they do. And boy, are they naive. Totally naive, in terms of what's really gonna happen."

Levine says that is not the only part of their cultural conditioning that's going to require an adjustment in the workplace.

"I talked to the CEO of a major corporation recently and I said, 'What characterizes your youngest employees nowadays?'" says Levine. "And he said, 'There's one major thing.' He said, 'They can't think long-range. Everything has to be immediate, like a video game. And they have a lot of trouble sort of doing things in a stepwise fashion, delaying gratification. Really reflecting as they go along.' I think that's new."

Levine calls the phenomenon visual motor ecstasy, where any cultural accoutrement that doesn't produce instant satisfaction is boring. As echo boomers grow up, they'll have to learn that life is not just a series of headlines and highlight reels.

But this may be something that, for now, echo boomers can deal with.
"What would you call your generation?" Buckingham asked Scott, one of her focus group participants.

"Perfect," he says, laughing.

I can kind of understand that. Instant gratification and the entire idea that my generation feels like it's....special.

Just from my experiences in my fraternity, in ROTC, in classes etc. Kids just expect things to 'work out'...and when it doesn't they fall apart. I've been around kids in all walks that when they want to do something or when they lead something they just expect everyone around them to jump in and help or do it for them.

i've always lived life as "the worst will happen", so I dont thnk college delayed maturity.

Of course the facts that I started my freshman year of HS living in a boarding house 100mi from my parents and then finished my sophomore year in an apartment 150 miles from my parents- might have had something to do in assisting that.

I would tend to agree that college delays maturity.

I would tend to agree as well. In my opinion, too, since college is a money-making institution, they do not prepare college students for the realities out there when they do graduate (ie. a flooded job market, no, you will not walk into a CEO position with a BA degree or even a Master's in many instances, etc.). I say this too because I wasn't prepared in this area.

TxAPhi,
Once again, you rock! GREAT ARTICLE!

I SOOOO see the annoyance of the "helicopter parents"! No, Little Jimmy is NOT going to get a trophy JUST for participating...These kids aren't taught to lose gracefully. That is an underrated skill. You WEREN'T THE BEST! DEAL! And work harder...No one wants to WORK HARDER!

It seems as if they want things to come now, if not yesterday. The parents feel as if their children piss and isht platinum...

Personal responsibility and humility seem to be things of the past!

Of course college delays "real world maturity." That's what's so great about it! Who wants to be a hardened, jaded, world-weary person by their 21st birthday? Not me! I look at myself and the kids I graduated with who didn't go to school and got married at 18, and I'm thinking, "Whoa...glad I didn't go down that road"...because now those people have multiple kids, way too much responsibility, and they've never experienced anything except their hometown. College is a good thing!

A few years ago, The Atlantic Monthly wrote a good article about "The Organization Kid," which was a direct response to the famous William Whyte study "The Organization Man." Basically, kids in college 3-4 years ago (they used Princeton as an example) grew up so used to being overprogrammed that they rarely get into things about which they're passionate. There's not much experimentation or exploration of new interests...and to some extent, that's completely true.

One of the examples they used was the "joined-at-the-hip" relationship where there's not much or any love between the two participants. Where even our older siblings' college experiences were characterized by one or two serious relationships and a lot of dating around--we're more likely to have one serious relationship that begins in the first weeks or months of college and ends around graduation.

Interestingly, the article TxAPhi posted is sort of up for debate, especially in the community in which I work. There's little to no empirical data to support it, and it's an amazingly superficial and stereotypical reading of such a massive sample size, in spite of one of the pillars of this reading coming in the form of 'don't read a book by its cover' - the whole 'now even virgins have green hair and tattoos' phenomenon. It's a mishmash of contradictions, right up to studies showing more and more social conservatism among youth.

Some have gone so far as to imply that there is some reverse-engineering of the biases of older generations going on in the studying and especially reporting.

As far as college - of course it's insulating, just as any other self-contained group of people would be. Even joining a trade union would have this effect, it just wouldn't encompass your social circle. Since college is now fully a 'lifestyle' for those in it (or just barely out), I'd say it's definitely a retardant to maturity. I can say this, because I still giggle at poop jokes, denoting my massive immaturity.

Amen!

Does college delay real world maturity? Hell yes! But....So what? We have the rest of our lives to be "adults" especially that our life expectancy is longer. These times should be cherished.

I completely agree. Who cares about maturity? You'll probably have at least 40 years of being mature after college, so what's the rush?

College absolutely delays real world maturity. It's like last night when I was at the bars...I mean for the most part there are very few places outside a college town in which thousands of people are out getting just totally wasted on a thursday night. You can't do that in the real world (or so I've been told ;) )

bump

Thanks!!!

Excellent question!

Do Colleges Prepare Students of the after college life? No. They teach Robotic people. Go to class, study, get grades and graduate.

Are they prepared for the after college life, of course not.

When I went to work for R H Macy, I had to go through a retraining on what I had studied along with all of the rest of the new people. We were hired for one reason only, we were in the learning mode of college.

Now, is it not true, that is where the GLOs come in to focus for the finer things of after college education? Oh, say social functioning, running a small business of officership, accounting, recruitment, social functions, ECT?

I learned things such as this is what Business Recruiters are looking for. GPA, and running or being a member of a GLO.

So, I guess there is a very valuable reason GLOs are looked at at least the first time they get a job.:)

I think it varies even between those who go away to college and those who live at home while in college. I think of college as a half-way house in life, a bridge between dependence and independence. You have to start to learn to become self sufficient but, for the typical student, there is still a safety net in the parental units at home. You have to learn to cook and do laundry, balance your checkbook, budget your money, etc. You have to become more assertive in handling things when they go wrong with registration, roommates who don't pay their share of the phone bill, etc. I think it's a valuable experience that helps ease the transition.

ETA: Good to see you posting here again, James.

if im understanding you correctly (and who know with an Earp post), i feel like your last statement contradicts the one before it.

if GLO members are more likely to be exposed to "the finer things after college" ie social functioning, business dinners, presentation skils, leadership ability, etc. then shouldnt that make us looked at the most when pursuing work after college?

or, does that work as a disavantage because we potentially have these skills and therefore makes us less impressionable?

Yes, college delays "Real world" maturity. One of my greatest sources of entertainment right now is spelling out dirty words on my Lite Brite. Who does that past the age of 30?

The article on over-progammed kids was interesting. However, neither me or any of the kids I can recall growing up were ever over-programmed. I played soccer for a few years in grade school, but we had practice Thursday nights and a game on Saturday and that was it. I had never heard of traveling teams until I was in middle school. However, it was different for my little sister (whose 15). She wanted to play T-Ball when she was roughly 6 years old, but my mom thought all the local leagues were too competitive (not to mention most of the kids had already been playing in the league for a year or two). I think the delay on maturity comes from the the pressure parents are putting on kids nowadays, and they really don't get much of a childhood.

How true it is ?

Second school, had roommates in an apartment and lived and ate well! While we thought of af a neato place it was a dump, but it was our palace. :) Went to the laundry mat weeklly to do laundry, the grocery store to buy food for three guys!;)

Living in a GLO with house mother, we did clean up as pledges and still went to wash clothse;) .

When started a local did all of the above! Still!:D


I now what you are refering to! Mamas Boy/Daughter neeed to come home for help! Oh, and do dirty clothes. Except, I learned to do that early on!

Guess age does make a difference!!!:rolleyes:

But GLOs do give a better perspective if only it is learned!

I teach high school students and they are exactly like the article TxAPhi posted. They think they are just "due" because they show up. I have had so many problems with kids asking me to change grades or parents who think their child is "so close" to the next grade that they should automatically get the grade they want. It is so annoying!

I think this statement generalizes the point too much.

That is, there are situations where people go from small towns to big city schools, or vice versa. There are situations where people are working their way through school, juggling full-time jobs with full class schedules. There are also situations where people do learn a great deal in college that they are able to directly translate into their post-collegiate lives, whether it be from classes or relationships.

Is someone who never went to college more likely to mature faster than someone who went to school? What about distance away from home?

I just think there are too many variables associated with the college experience. For me, I think college accelerated my maturity. For others, I can see where it was a break from maturity. I don't think either is necessarily a bad thing.

I agree with his completely!! I grew up in a small, rural area. The night I graduated high school I saw a guy propose to his sweetheart. While I was personaly appauled, most of my class thought it was cute. Where are those two now? Divorced and both have been remarried 2 more times. So 13 years out of high school they both have multiple children and multiple failed marriages. For the kids who didn't leave our town and go to college, that story is fairly typical of what their life was like. I'm tickled pink that college delayed the onset of those types of adult issues!!!!

I absolutely think being a student does delay maturity.

Being in medical school and thus, still in that student phase, I look at my friends with jobs and feel like they're a lot more mature than I am. I often feel very young in a non-medical school group of people my age. And when I consider what I'll be like as a 25 year old 4th year medical student (or looking at my friends who are 4th years) it doesn't seem like I'll be the same as the people who have held a job for 4 years while I've been in school.

You have been lied to. :)

How much or how little fun you have, how seriously or not seriously you take yourself, is up to you. All the options are out there if you look and if you don't get hung up on smallminded people telling you how you SHOULD be.

did college prepare me?

moreso than highschool, but not really

I could trust maybe 1/3 of my professors wanted me to learn something.

That was a drastic improvement from highschool

Depends on the person, depends on the college. I think it somewhat delays reality, but for me and people I know it fostered some maturity. I mean, sure, you get drunk a lot and whatnot, but thats only half of it. During the 2004 elections, tailgating on campus was like tailgating at a campaign rally. Plus, when your tailgates and fraternity gatherings include CEO's and congressmen, you obviously get experience networking. I think at SEC schools and others, there is some amount of pressure to dress and act in a more adult manner, which I think is beneficial. At our fraternity, our late night drunken conversations at the bar would often turn into projecting the 08 race, financial markets, etc...Which is something I can't do with some of my older friends who went to other schools. So I think it obviously delays the real world, but in some situations it can make the transition a lot more smooth.

This is a bit of a digression, but I think related thought which may reflect somewhat on the question -- and perhaps a reason that colleges work the way they do.

I had an English Lit professor (very young PHd) in college who went off on a real tangent one day in class talking about his theory that the real reason for college as we know it in this country is to keep "us" off the real world job market for four years. (or more)

His thought was that high school graduates, by and large, lack the skills to participate in industry, etc.

He felt that there should be a mandatory four year government service -- be it military, Peace Corp, etc. Considering that it was the middle of the Vietnam War, this was not a particularly popular thought on campus.

His contention was that during those four years of maturing, we would all learn a lot about life, ourselves and how to organize our time, which would make us much better students and more ready to learn.

I must say that "non traditional" students who had come back from Vietnam did have a maturity and sense of purpose that many of us didn't seem to. That is not to say that they didn't do their share of hell raising.

Personally, I dropped out of school to take a job with only a quarter left, and when I finally returned to finish several years and much experience later, I found it much easier to study and finishing the degree did seem more important to me.

Having said that, with the experiences (life and professional) I had at that time, the degree probably was not necessary. It just seemed like a sentence in my life that didn't have a period at the end, so I felt compelled to finish.

Finally, as I've said before, what I learned in my major area of study, even at a recognized leader in that area, didn't teach me much of how the broadcast industry really was/is. Many people will tell you that you will learn more in your first few months on the job than you learned during your entire college career.

That's the way it was with me -- and when I finished my degree, the honest professors actually told me that they had learned a lot from me.

And I'm not that bright.

IMO:
Not only does it delay maturity, it also delays a serious reality-check. Sure college is about having fun and getting a great education in the process, but when students skip right to, I think they miss out on a lot of valuable life lessons. I can't tell you how many of my peers I see on a daily basis taking their higher-education for granted by literally not learning. You can't expect to learn if you don't do any homework and don't show up to class because you're hung-over from that rockin' party you went to. There are millions of teenagers that cannot go to college because they cannot afford it, while these kind of people get to take the spot of someone who truly deserves it. Sure people have their whole lives, but having maturity that is at least equivalent with your age group will make a big impact on your overall quality of life. The more mature you, the better decsions you make, the more confident you appear in interviews etc.

I'm honestly glad that things worked out the way they did for me. Sure I'm a bit older then my freshmen peers, but I value every minute of my education. I worked in the real world for 3 years and saw how a degree will take you so much further in life. So I'm not taking any moment in college for granted.

Which leads me to another point... a lot of college students leave undergrad thinking they will instantly land a $60,000+ job. If you graduate from an extremely prestigous school and have some great resources to utilize, then this may be true. However, most students don't have the previously mentioned advantages and are devestated when they realize they won't get that dream job right off the bat. Spending some time out in the workforce during school or before it shows you that experience goes a looonnng way. Most likely when students leave school they have no experience in their field, meaning they will get paid less. I had to go through this struggle with my husband who is incredibly bright, had an excellent gpa, lots of activities and did some networking. Needless to say he didn't get his dream job and began feeling pretty down. He refused to understand that having a college degree doesn't mean you will be able to skip all of the b.s. You just get to skip out on some of it! Many of his peers he graduated with suffered from the same "Why did I even bother?" syndrome.

This is life, darlings, the things you want aren't just handed to you on a silver platter. You have to be willing to work for it. Plus you can only put off the real world so long. THe sooner you realize what its like out there, the easier it will be to cope. I think that's a lesson that many students coming out of college miss out on...

"Its not the grades you make.....but the hands you shake."

I think just being that age in general delays real world maturity. College is a bubble. I think it should be treated less as the culmination of your high school achievements and more as a cushion to embrace failure. I'm not saying you should try to fail every class, but it's ok to try something new (as long as it is legal) or to not succeed at something. I think I speak for many of us when I say that I've learned more from my mistakes than my successes.

That also being said, I think a lot of young people would benefit from a gap year between high school and college. Whether you work or travel, or have a combination of both, I think it would be extremely beneficial for the average traditional 18-year old to get up off his arse, work to pay for his own rent without mom and dad's help, and to take that once in a lifetime chance to spend a month abroad taking in cultural highlights or volunteering with a third world country, a rural Appalachian community or an inner city Head Start program. I think he'd come into college with a few missed hours at work because he slept through his alarm, and the memories of the repercussions, a few hangovers and the memories of the repercussions, and a few dissapointments, rejections and setbacks and the satisfaction of knowing the sky wouldn't fall because someone didn't want whatever you were selling. And possibly, yes, some maturity. I think he'd take school a little more seriously. I would hope, anyway, that he would have a stronger focus. But that's unpredictable and depends on the person. A year will make some difference, but there is still plenty of maturing to do, not to mention the peer pressure that can influence the most mature and rational person to make some really stupid decisions.

Whether you go straight to college or take time off, you have unreal expectations. Kids in the US have unreal self-esteem because they have been built up and told how great they are by their family, friends and teachers. Not everyone can be the valedictorian, but it seems more and more schools don't want to reward the hardest workers on actual merit. Everyone needs to feel like a winner! There have to be losers, too-- you have to have some incentive to want to try harder.

And we're so confident that we're the best because everyone has told us our entire lives that we're the best-- And we still can't do math because we're too busy congratulating ourselves on winning a blue ribbon at the pony rides at the petting zoo. The trouble is that everyone else who rode the pony rides got the same damn blue ribbon. I like Ricky Bobby's take on things: "If you're not first, you're last," right? Ranking matters. There can't be 100 people in a group of 100 who are first place winners.

We may not be mature at 18, but we sure are confident.

So no, college doesn't necessarily delay real world maturty. Age delays real world maturity. College helps soften the blow a little bit.

And if I ever have kids, they're taking a year off to attend the School of Hard Knocks so that when college comes around, they get more out of it. I wish I had.

Do you really think so?

Or do we spend a lot of time trying to convince others that we are?

Or maybe a combination, depending on the person...

:D

Hell Yes! For Sure!

But what I guess I was refering to was the regimentation of college life as a student. You have to get up and go to class. No mommy or daddy to make you get up and go to school.
It is like a job, you do not go to work, you get fired. If you do not go to class, you flunk out and leave school and get a job.

So, you get a job, get married and get a child. Do you grow up from that especially when you get divorced because you do not make enough money?

I really guess the responsibility depends on the individual on what they want to do!

But if you have a menial job, where are you going to hang out? The locla Saloon for beer with your buddys?

If you join a GLO while going to school, you "may" learn some social graces and learn how to treat guests of he and she persuassion, go out and not just say DAH? :)

I had my choice according to My DAD, graduate from HS, get a job and buy a car and get married or go to college on my money as I worked for it.

So, now I know how not to slurp my soup, which fork goes where,eat shrimp, lobster, and other nice items instead of having hamburgers and fries every Friday nite as a kid, our big nite out for dinner weekly at the local diner.

Oh Well!:D

The olden days were nice when your a kid and no damn $$$$;)

One of the biggest wake-up calls that you are now an adult: buying your own toilet paper.

DeltAlum, I don't think everyone is supremely confident, but there is an awful epidemic of smugness at that age-- that you have your future completely mapped out. Sure, at 19 or 20, you'll have the breakdown where you are hopelessly confused and think you will change majors or that you're going to keep going and get a master's to buy time, but overall, the students I talk to these days may not have today figured out, but they sure have all the answers for tomorrow and how they're going to be making a sweet salary and sitting in the corner office by the time they graduate. Reality is pretty harsh.

OH, to true!:eek:

I am invincible, I can do everything no matter what!

We have all been through it and do not deny it!:D

But age is a terrible thing isnt it?:o

If We only know what We know now what We should We sould have doen then! Oh My!