Parents

A lot of Gen Y experts out there are telling companies to suck up to Gen Y's parents. Here's an excerpt from a blog posting, for example, by Tammy Erickson in connection with her book ("Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving At Work") put out by Harvard Business Publishing (meaning, she's obviously no slouch):

• Distribute packs of information for parents to students at universities and job fairs
• Hold a career fair in your community designed specifically for parents
• Create special FAQ material directed at parents' likely questions and concerns (retirement, health benefits, 401(k) plans, educational opportunities and so on
• Hold parent orientation sessions or conference calls
• Invite parents of interns and new hires to visit the Y's place of work and meet the boss and colleagues
• Provide the staffing necessary to follow through with parent requests
• Run ads communicating your positive attributes as an employer aimed at parents
• Provide incentives for parents to refer their children (beginning with your current employees - if your current employees won't refer their own children, consider whether you really are a good employer)
• Include parents in employee benefits

Do you have a parent-approved brand?

I can see the short-term benefit of this kind of recruiting strategy. Very short-term. However, I wonder what kind of people you end up with when you use that kind of selection mechanism. Maybe the same subset of Gen Yers employers complain about all the time: the ones who don't show up on time, can't follow directions, can't make even simple decisions on their own, can't behave like grown-ups. I would posit that there's a connection between that kind of recruiting and that kind of employee.

So maybe you get entry-level bodies in the door that way. But what's that going to look like longer term? When you're trying to groom young employees to rise up through the management funnel? How do you make grown-ups, let alone leaders, out of people whom you selected for their dependent, child-like qualities?

I give Gen Y's parents a really hard time about infantilizing their grown children, and now companies are being encouraged to do the same thing. I have to think that's not a good outcome for those companies as a business matter, and it's downright toxic for Gen Y.

And for those whose immediate response is, "That's what Gen Y is like, there's no way around it," I say: You're not looking hard enough. You have to recruit more wisely than this, because with some of these recruiting strategies, you are inviting longer-term headaches.

Please weigh in. Am I wrong? And Gen Yers: do you want to be treated this way? Do you think that's a good thing?

(Here's my memo to employers; my memo to helicopter parents; and my memo to Gen Y. And here's a sample HR Director's lament.)

So I was catching up on my Tivo'ed Project Runway episodes the other night when I couldn't sleep. (I won't call it a guilty pleasure -- I will defend Project Runway 'til the end!)  Thought I could escape Gen Y issues for a brief spell? No sir. In this particular episode, the lovely Frau Klum challenged the designers to "design a look for recent college graduates who are starting their lives as independent professional women."

Independent? Really? Then why did all these young women BRING THEIR MOTHERS ALONG? Naturally, the moms started dominating the working relationship with the designers, and the designers started pitching to the moms rather than to the daughters/clients. In defending their designs to the judges, the designers would say things like, "Holly and her mother seemed really happy with it" -- a reminder that with Gen Y, parents are (almost) always part of the package. How old does Gen Y have to get before their parents back off? I'm intensely curious.

In any event, with the exception of the winning design by Jerell, these were some of the worst clothes you could ever see in the workplace. Or anywhere. Yikes. (Read the blow-by-blow here.)

Usually the parents of applicants drive me a little nuts, but yesterday I received a lovely email from an applicant's father who reminded me that a little perspective goes a long way when people go into panic mode. And this time of year, applicants are going into serious panic mode.

The family crisis? The applicant -- call her X -- had just found out that the superstar professor who had promised to write her a recommendation a few months back has decided not to write any this coming semester. X started stressing, called a family conference with her parents, and agonized over this lost opportunity.

Once X and I hopped on the phone, I told her the following:

• Recommendations don't really matter all that much in the law school admissions process (unlike business school). Very few end up changing the admissions officer's analysis in a material way. You want to be smart in deciding whom you ask and how you ask, but after that, it's largely out of your hands, and not a big factor anyway.
• Yes, sometimes faculty are jerks. Yes, talk is cheap. Nothing you can do about that.
• If someone you ask for a recommendation declines to write one, don't push. I'd much rather he be honest wtih you and let you move on to another recommender, than have him say yes and write you a "meh" recommendation (and you'd never even know that the letter he sent was "meh").
• There are some things you should worry about in the application process. This turn of events isn't one of them, so don't lose even one more minute of sleep over it.

The conversation took all of ten minutes, but apparently it made an impression, because X's dad then sent me the following email:

Anna -

Although we have never met or even spoken, I have with great interest and admiration observed your comments and advice to X (a wonderful young lady), and do most appreciate your helping her, as your guidance is simply terrific.

A wise man once told me "never sweat the small stuff, and it's almost all small stuff."

Should you tire of advising law school applicants (of course only after X gets accepted to several great law schools), I suggest you consider expanding your consulting practice to include advising:

a) Husbands on how to treat their wives.
b) Wives on how to treat husbands.
c) Partners on how to treat partners, or
d) large corporate clients on anything.

Thanks for all you do for my favorite daughter.

Aside from being the sweetest thing ever, this email from X's father reminded me to remind you not to confuse the big stuff and the little stuff.

Our college counselor Christine reports from Silicon Valley:

_____________________________________________________

“I would give my left testicle for my son to get into Harvard.”

Appalling? Absolutely. Actually said? You bet.

Madeline Levine, a psychologist in Marin County, California and author of The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected, Unhappy Kids, shared this quote from a patient’s father during a recent talk I attended in Palo Alto, California. Her point was clear – the stress wealthy communities put on kids is inappropriate and unhealthy. In some cases it is even killing them.

As the parent of three little ones, I left the talk feeling almost ill. Levine pointed out the skyrocketing suicide rates among young teen girls, how school, homework, and structured activities fill up 16 hours and more a day for your average high schooler, and how the craziness of traveling sports teams for kids starts as young as 7 and 8 years old.

Kids like those Levine treats used to have it made. They had involved parents, comfortable homes, and lived free from financial concerns. In the last decade, though, these upper-middle class teens have shown shockingly high rates of mental illness. It used to be that depressed kids looked depressed – poor hygiene, sucky grades, behavioral problems in school. Now the kids in Levine’s office have acceptances to Stanford and Princeton in hand. They look like they have it all together – until they lift their shirt sleeves and you see the cutting marks.

My read on this – based on reading Levine’s book and on spending the last 8 years parenting in Silicon Valley – is that more and more parents in elite communities view their children as products to be perfected. Sending a kid to the Ivy League is like having your initial public offering outperform all market expectations.

None of this is to say that aspiring to raise kids who are academically successful is bad in and of itself. My own progeny are the IPOs of two Ivy League-educated parents. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were academically able enough to attend elite schools someday. I certainly won’t discourage them. Levine’s point is that the problem comes when the child’s identity – and that of their parents – revolves completely around achieving that dream. If they want to be a lifeguard, a pirate, and a lawnmower man (my kids' current aspirations at 7, 5, and 2), I feel like my job is to help them be the best they can be. Well….maybe not the pirate.

Many of the things Levine recommended to save our kids I am already doing – trying to ensure that my kids get good sleep, trying to lay off the pressure. I just wonder how to maintain this when it seems like I am a fish swimming upstream. It’s hard to not worry that your kid is missing out when everyone else is spending the summer at tutoring centers and language immersion camps and you know yours will be eating popsicles and playing in the backyard sprinklers.

The only positive? More than 1,000 Palo Alto area parents turned out for Levine’s speech. Perhaps we can start a trend.

Today's NYT writes about how insanely competitive the college admissions process has been this year ("Elite Colleges Reporting Record Low Admissions"). It's never easy getting into an Ivy or Ivy equivalent, but this year has hit a new level off difficulty. The admissions rate at some of those schools for the 2007-08 year (so far):

Harvard: 7.1%
Yale: 8.3%
Columbia: 8.7%
Brown: 13%
Dartmouth: 13%

Those statistics are in large part a function of demographics. As another recent NYT article explained, this year and next have the highest numbers of graduating high school seniors... ever. That's a lot of people competing for a more or less fixed number of seats at a more or less fixed number of top schools.

Compounding this demographic reality is the end of binding early decision at some of these top schools, which has freed applicants up to apply to more schools than they would have in years past.

More compounding: waitlists. As applications to these schools have soared, more students get waitlisted, thereby inspiring them to apply to more schools as a hedge. (See my waitlist advice here.)

And finally: as more of the elite schools ramp up their recruiting of lower-income applicants and make attendance more affordable, those schools are receiving more applications from people who might not have applied to these schools otherwise.

The end result? “There is a pure level of panic and frenzy like they’ve never seen before,” according to Scott White, director of guidance at Montclair High School in New Jersey.

That's a perfect storm right there, as those two NYT articles lay out so nicely.

One of the things I struggle with as an admissions consultant is the duty I feel not to feed that frenzy and make it worse. The last thing I want to do is to use scare tactics as a sales tool. And yet... those statistics really are scary for a lot of families, and I don't blame them for wigging out a little, or a lot.

And I've never bought into the assumption -- fed more by the most prestigious mainstream media than the elite schools themselves -- that your life will somehow be worse because you didn't attend an Ivy League school. On the other hand, I will also never deny that these elite schools really are excellent, and that brand names help in the real world. Nobody ever has to defend being a "school snob" to me when they are selecting schools for themselves or their kids. I just hate seeing people go insane about it and forget that there are a lot of ways to become successful -- at least in this country -- and they don't all involve the Ivy League.

I don't like the ubiquitous message to millions of teenagers that their whole identities should be wrapped up in going to school X. That's unreasonably fatalistic -- they have so many choices ahead of them that will determine their success or failure, and 99% of those choices have nothing to do with the name of their college.

I believe in excellence, and I don't pretend that all schools are equally good. There are excellent colleges out there -- some of them are Ivies, some of them aren't. Some of them have famous brand names behind them, others don't. Some kids flourish at Ivies, others don't. Life is complicated, and so is picking a college.

Note that this whole conversation is completely separate from the question of paying for college, and whether a certain degree from a certain school at a certain price is worth the investment given whatever the alternatives are. That's an entirely different analysis, one I've written about, for example, here and here.

BusinessWeek continues the debate about Gen Y's "narcissism." (I put that in quotations marks because it's a loaded term, but also because it comes originally from Prof. Jean Twenge's study about Gen Y, not from me.)

The author of the BW article ("Gen Y: Really All That Naricisstic?") points out that there's a nicer side to this phenomenon, that Gen Y really just has a sense of "healthy self-esteem."

I'm not a psychiatrist, so I won't try to diagnose a person, or a whole generation, with a clinical disorder. However, as I've written about often, I do think that what we're seeing is an unhealthy level of self-esteem, self-esteem that is fake and fragile when it has not been earned. And I don't think it's crazy to spot elements of narcissism in an entire demographic that thinks the world wants to read blog postings about what they had for breakfast. An exaggeration, perhaps, but not far off. If lay-people want to call that narcissistic, I don't really have a bone to pick.

The comments to the BW article have already started coming in, and they are (as is often the case) just as interesting as the original article. ("Just like to point out that the Gen Ys are the kids of the original "Me Generation," the Boomers"...)

The boomer connection is an interesting one, and I've been mulling over the role of helicopter parents for a while now. I had one of those a-ha moments at a wedding I went to last year. Some of the younger kids wanted to perform. Some of them played piano, others hopped around on stage doing funny dances. It was funny, sometimes cute, sometimes not, and standard wedding fare. What seemed different from weddings many moons ago was that the parents expected the whole world to stop and watch what their kids were doing, and naturally they zoomed in with their camcorders to document every minute.

As I was watching, it dawned on me that an entire generation of kids has had every little gurgle and tap dance recorded for posterity, and I wonder what it does to a developing sense of self to be treated like a little celebrity from day one. Their every move has been documented and oohed and aahed over since before they emerged from the womb. It's like growing up with their very own paparazzi and publicists rolled into one.

I don't fault Gen Y for any of this. And even parents aren't completely to blame. Technology plays an interesting role here. Older generations didn't have access to cheap camcorders, for example, and one of the reasons previous generations of college students didn't talk to their parents six times a day was because you had to use a public phone booth -- down the hall! -- and pay a lot of money to make a long-distance call. Technology changes everything, obviously, and in this instance it enables helicopter and paparazzi parenting. Maybe it's not just a boomer thing, but I suspect it's a combination. Boomers + technology = helicopter/paparazzi parenting. It's interesting to me that so many of these articles about Gen Y and its "narcissism" seem to assume that this behavior springs forth sui generis.

More postings on Gen Y narcissism here and here. Postings about helicopter parents here. A post about real celebrity parents, Hilton/Lohan-style, here. And a post about the Say Everything phenomenon here.

I was so excited to hear about Princeton's plans to formalize a Princeton-sponsored gap year for their students before they start college. In this case, the gap year program will be for applicants who have already been admitted to Princeton, but gap years are also a great idea for high school students who have not yet finalized their college plans.

I have almost daily conversations with parents in which I recommend a gap year for their high school students, and most of the time, those parents are resistant. Many of them aren't familiar with the concept, worry that admissions officers won't like it, and wonder if a gap year will put their children at a disadvantage.

I've written here before about gap years, but here are my two cents in summary:

Admissions officers love gap years. Freshmen who arrive on campus after a gap year have had an extra year to mature, see the world, learn about themselves, gain a better sense of what they want out of college, and recharge their batteries. Every day I see what happens when people start college before they're really ready to make the most of it -- you can spot that in their transcripts a mile away. It helps when heavy-hitters like Princeton and Harvard and Yale officially get behind the gap year concept.

To get a sense of the cool things people do during their gap years, see Harvard's admissions website. Below is an excerpt from their page called "Time Out or Burn Out for the Next Generation." Note especially the last sentence: "While no one should take a year off simply to gain admission to a particular college, time away almost never makes one a less desirable candidate or less well prepared for college."

Perhaps the best way of all to get the full benefit of a "time-off" is to postpone entrance to college for a year. For over thirty years, Harvard has recommended this option, indeed proposing it in the letter of admission. Normally a total of about fifty to seventy students defer college until the next year.

The results have been uniformly positive. Harvard's daily student newspaper, The Crimson reported (5/19/2000) that students who had taken a year off found the experience "…so valuable that they would advise all Harvard students to consider it." Harvard's overall graduation rate of 98% is among the highest in the nation, perhaps in part because so many students take time off. One student, noting that the majority of her friends will simply spend eight consecutive terms at Harvard, "wondered if they ever get the chance to catch their breath."

During her year off, the student quoted above toured South America with an ice-skating company and later took a trip to Russia. Another interviewed in the article worked with a growing e-commerce company (in which the staff grew from ten to a hundred during the year) and backpacked around Europe for six months....

Members of one recent class participated in the following activities, and more, in the interim year: drama, figure skating, health-care, archeological exploration, kibbutz life, language study, mineralogical research, missionary work, music, non-profit groups, child welfare programs, political campaigns, rebuilding schools, special needs volunteering, sports, steel drumming, storytelling, swing dance, university courses, and writing - to name some chosen at random. They took their interim year in the following locales: Belize, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mongolia, Nepal, Philipines, Scandinavia, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Uruguay, United States and Zimbabwe.

Many students divide their year into several segments of work, travel, or study. Not all can afford to travel or to take part in exotic activities. A number have served in the military or other national service programs. Some remain at home, working, taking part-time courses, interning, and still finding the time to read books they have never had time to fit into their schedules or begin to write the "great American novel." Others have been able to forge closer ties with parents or grandparents from whom they may have drifted away during the hectic pace of the high-school years....

Students taking a year off prior to Harvard are doing what students from the U.K. do with their so-called "gap year." Other countries have mandatory military service for varying periods of time. Regardless of why they took the year off or what they did, students are effusive in their praise. Many speak of their year away as a "life-altering" experience or a "turning point," and most feel that its full value can never be measured and will pay dividends the rest of their lives. Many come to college with new visions of their academic plans, their extracurricular pursuits, the intangibles they hoped to gain in college, and the career possibilities they observed in their year away. Virtually all would do it again.

Nevertheless, taking time off can be a daunting prospect for students and their parents. Students often want to follow friends on safer and more familiar paths. Parents worry that their sons and daughters will be sidetracked from college, and may never enroll. Both fear that taking time off can cause students to "fall behind" or lose their study skills irrevocably. That fear is rarely justified. High school counselors, college administrators, and others who work with students taking time off can help with reassurance that the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Occasionally students are admitted to Harvard or other colleges in part because they accomplished something unusual during a year off. While no one should take a year off simply to gain admission to a particular college, time away almost never makes one a less desirable candidate or less well prepared for college.

One of the really interesting things about Gen Y is how dramatically its preferences are driving changes in everything from workplace policies to luxury goods marketing to real estate development.

Last week, I headed over to the Boston Society of Architects to hear a talk by a woman named Persis Rickes about ways in which architects who design for universities need to be thinking about what Gen Y wants out of its academic and living spaces.

The talk was in many ways a primer on Gen Y for an audience that didn’t know much about this generation. Dr. Rickes did a great job pulling together some of the basic information about Gen Y (much of it culled, with attribution, from the seminal work Millennials Rising by Neil Howe and William Strauss). I was most interested in the following points from the talk (and for clarity, I'll break out the parts that are my own editorializing):

Many buildings will be around for 50 or 100 years -- how do you design a building that may already be outdated 10 years from now?

Just ten years ago, university architects were putting jacks in every wall on the assumption that everyone would want to be able to plug in anywhere for internet access. Of course, today everyone expects wifi, and all that wiring isn't getting used. Wired? That's so last millennium. Trying to predict what people will want out of their spaces for the next half century is perhaps a quixotic exercise, but architects are trying to be as forward-thinking as possible.

What about the ideal architecture for Gen Y? Part of that depends on their aspirations, which brings us to:

Gen Y is civic minded, socially conscious, dedicated to justice and the environment, and involved in a variety of causes.

Gen Yers expect to learn in real-life scenarios to prepare for their careers after college, and colleges need to be building the equivalent of “moot court” classrooms for students to get hands-on experience that approximates what they’ll face out in the real world. Students expect opportunities for real-world internships and service work. Schools need to offer “blended spaces” for teaching and learning a mix of academic and practical skills.

Anna says: This desire flies in the face of the mission of a liberal arts education, which values teaching you “how to think” over teaching specialized or pre-professional skills. But even at staunch liberal arts colleges, students are demanding hands-on experience through their extracurricular activities and internships, even if they don’t receive academic credit for them. Schools will need to think about what kinds of spaces they’re offering for hands-on training and learning, whether that happens as part of the curriculum or as an extracurricular activity.

I also wonder what it means for business schools that an entire generation is obsessed with social or environmental justice jobs (that's not the best short-hand and doesn't really cover the whole range, but I'll use it for these purposes). I personally think it would be impossible to do good without the private sector, but I suspect that business schools have a marketing problem on their hands with this cohort, and it explains the big uptick in social entrepreneurship and corporate citizenship offerings at business schools.

It also explains why so many college students are flocking to law school. I often talk to people who think they can litigate away the world's big problems -- poverty, hunger, international conflict, and war -- and they have every expectation that they’ll do so while making six figures or more in the process and living a somewhat glamorous life. (Brangelina and Bono have created some unreasonable expectations.) The social justice jobs are definitely out there, but many people I hear from struggle with the paychecks associated with those jobs. Sometimes people come out of school with unrealistic expectations about what kinds of salaries they can command in a certain job or with a certain diploma hanging on the wall, and those expectations (reasonable and unreasonable) are a big subject of this whole blog more generally.

Because realistic expectations are so important, it is absolutely necessary for college students to observe different jobs first-hand, whether it's through an internship or some other avenue.

Gen Y is obsessed with achievement and is really, really stressed out.

Gen Y is under a lot of pressure to achieve and excel. They like conformity and rules, because conformity and rules relieve some of that pressure. They have an overachiever culture. They know that they are being measured. They want constant feedback.

That means schools will need to offer a lot of tutoring and testing help, as well as spaces where those services can be accessed 24/7. Students also want a lot of very nice extracurricular spaces to blow off some of that steam, and there’s also increased demand for spirituality and meditation spaces. They also need spaces to be overachievers and show off their work, for example through state-of-the art performance halls.

Anna says: This has absolutely been my experience counseling Gen Yers for the last eight or so years. They are so worried about making the slightest mistake, because they feel that the stakes are so high, and I continue to grapple with the best ways to deal with their high anxiety levels.

This is a generation for whom mental health treatment and mental health prescription drugs are fairly routine, and I wonder how people who work with, manage, counsel, teach, and mentor Gen Y can best prepare themselves to work with these high anxiety levels. It's not specifically what most of us are trained to do, but maybe we need to be. From time to time we hear awful stories about college students going over the edge in one form or another, and I'm intrigued by Cornell's efforts to train the university community to deal with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

More generally, these are the most risk-averse people I’ve ever encountered, and they fear doing things on their own (more on that below in the teamwork discussion). The kinds of questions people run by me every day reflect that fear. (“The application instructions say to put my name in a header. Could you please look at my header and sign off on it before I submit?”) Part of that phenomenon I also attribute to their parents (more on that below too). Part of our challenge as mentors for Gen Y is to help them develop their confidence to make decisions on their own when they are feeling that immense pressure to spread the risk. It's an interesting contrast to the strong confidence they feel in other ways (the next topic).

Gen Yers all think they’re special, don’t leave their parents behind, and want everything tailored to them and at their disposal 24/7.

Gen Y requires constant praise, much of it gratuitous, and feels entitled to it. Their parents have fed this sense of entitlement by making their kids feel as if they are the center of the universe, and the parents’ lives do indeed revolve around their kids. Gen Yers are sheltered and overprotected. They expect everyone else to jump at their say-so and are supremely confident -- some would say over-confident -- in their abilities.

For space planning, this means that Gen Y students expect 24/7 access to people and spaces and services, and schools will have to provide the technology to enable that kind of access. They expect private bathrooms and showers, single dorm rooms and apartments, and customized everything (such as cafeterias with 24/7 access to vegan food or whatever the case may be). They expect top-of-the-line health and wellness centers, academic support centers, and larger admissions offices (because they bring their whole families along).

Anna says: Yep - I’ve already said plenty on this subject (here and here -- note that the posting you're reading now will show up at the top of both links, so you'll have to scroll down for the older postings). The brouhaha over this recent voicemail is the perfect example. (Gen Y high school student finds it completely appropriate to call the COO of his county school system -- at home -- to complain that classes haven’t been canceled after three inches of snowfall; COO’s wife leaves an angry voicemail telling the kid to “get over it”; kid then posts the COO’s email and phone numbers on facebook.)

I'm also reminded of something an admissions officer once said to me: "With Gen Y's parents, their kid is always gifted or learning disabled. Those are the only two options." It's no accident that their children take that self-perception with them to college and into the workplace.

Gen Yers are always part of a group.

As much as they all want their own dorm rooms and bathrooms, they spend all their time together, travel in packs, work together, and study together. They therefore need lots of informal spaces that let them learn and study in groups.

Anna says: I've noticed that they also like to work on their applications in groups. Their college and grad school essays get passed around all over God's creation for feedback from parents, friends, neighbors, you name it. That's why so many essays read as if they were written by committee... because they were written by committee, and that rarely makes for a good essay, because the applicant's voice gets completely lost in the shuffle.

On an unrelated note: I've observed that Gen Yers also like to date in packs. In a way, it's not even a date at all, at least as someone Gen X or older would understand it.

Gen Yers multitask.

They need blended spaces for work and play because they’re never doing just one or the other.

Anna says: Definitely true. Whether they’re surfing the internet while in class, writing a paper at Starbucks, or instant messaging every five seconds while studying for an exam, this is an "ADD" generation that can’t focus on one thing for any length of time -- not necessarily because they literally have ADD (although some of them do, and that can compound the challenge), but because competing technology is always pulling them away from the task at hand. In that sense, young or old, we're all ADD'ers now, certainly in the workplace, but Gen Y takes multitasking to new extremes.

I wonder whether it’s a good idea for schools to accommodate this need to multitask. I know professors don’t like it when their students are buying shoes online during their lectures, and there has been some research showing that the human brain just doesn't do things all that well when it's multitasking (a lesson for us all, myself included). Just because Gen Y (or anyone, for that matter) wants something, does that mean it’s always good to give it to them?

Gen Yers are respectful of authority.

I’m not sure how respect for authority plays itself out in architecture and space planning, but the architects in the room found this characteristic very interesting.

Anna says: I disagree strongly with this characterization of Gen Y. I think the confusion on this point comes from a Boomer baseline of what it means to defy or disrespect authority. I suspect that in Boomer minds, if college students aren't lighting fires, smashing windows, and threatening to burn down Yale like in the Boomers' college days, then Gen Y must be pretty respectful of authority. And it's true that Gen Y, because of that risk-aversion I discussed above, doesn't like to rock the boat the way Boomers seemed to take a certain kind of pride in doing. But I would argue that Gen Y's admirable refusal to destroy things doesn't mean that they are respectful of authority.

Aside from that voicemail example I linked to above, I'll also point out the following:

I get an earful all day long from employers when they hear that I write about Gen Y. I hear about Gen Yers marching into the workplace thinking they can do the CEO’s job better than the CEO, and sometimes even saying so out loud. They expect management responsibility their first day out of college. I’ve even heard one employer tell me about a recent college grad who, on being given certain instructions, rolled her eyes, threw her pen on the table, and said, “That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard.” That loud thud you hear is the sound of jaws dropping at workplaces across the country.

I routinely have applicants tell me, in effect, “Yes, I know you were an admissions officer, but here’s why I think you’re wrong.” I get some level of push-back just about every day. I do want people to disagree with me, because I know I'm not omniscient and often the input is helpful. Still, I'm curious that there is so much push-back when it's my expertise and experience they're seeking out in the first place, and I get that only from Gen Y, and the younger set of Gen Y in particular. It's interesting.

I hear this kind of feedback from professors as well, who are also surprised by the way in which their students communicate with them, and the ways in they make demands. For example, I have heard from several professors who are shocked to receive what they consider shamelessly casual emails demanding (not asking for -- demanding) special considerations, extensions, etc. These professors are also, in some cases, shocked to be referred to as "hey john" or whatever their first names happen to be.

Over the years, all this leads me to conclude that this is not a generation that as a group respects authority, experience, age, or a higher position on the org chart, although individual differences certainly occur (as with any of these generalizations).

On this subject, one of my Gen Y colleagues pointed out the following to me -- great food for thought:

While Gen Yers may not have respect for the trappings of authority (emailing profs with first names, office etiquette, etc.), I think they have tremendous respect for the value of authority. That is, they know what it means to be ranked X, or in position Y, or to be offered a job at a particular bank or office. They also know what it means to "know" someone in authority -- how to pull strings, ask for favors, and use connections to authority figures to advance their careers, percentages (of admission?), etc.

I recognize that this is a wholly different "respect for authority" than that term usually involves, but it it still a type of respect. It's a respect for the power of authority -- for the access, advancement, and "step skipping" that authority can grant you (i.e. if you "know" someone you can avoid some of the bottom rungs of the ladder).

So in that sense, I don't think Gen Y is entirely disrespectful of authority. I think the concept of "authority" has changed; instead of authority being representative of "the man," it's about "the connection," the "hookup," or the favor. Why apply through HR if your father's partner can put your resume on the desk of an executive? The recognition of the executive's power is a certain "respect" for his authority. Not the same type of respect we're talking about, but a respect nonetheless.

There were a lot of other interesting nuggets at this talk, but I’ll conclude by asking the following:

Anna Also Says: This stuff doesn’t come cheap. Who's paying for all of this?

I know applicants who decide where to go to college because one school has a cool rock climbing wall or that other school’s dormitories have seen better days or that school has the best cafeteria.

Somewhere in the application frenzy, the big picture seems sometimes to get lost. This country club approach to college doesn’t come cheap, and when Gen Y complains about its staggering student loans, I have to wonder who they think is financing those Olympic size swimming pools, state of the art performance halls, 24/7 access to freshly prepared vegan menus, spa-like wellness centers, and so on. That lifestyle is very expensive, and college students are paying for it with a staggering amount of borrowed money, plus interest.

It makes me wonder what some people's priorities are, what they're looking for in their college experience. Sounds to me as if some of them want a 4, 5, 6-year stay at Canyon Ranch rather than the best education they can find. I don't knock any of those wonderful features -- I know I would have loved them when I was in college too -- but I see some people focusing a lot on the immediate benefits and not on the long-term costs.

It also becomes very clear to me why many college students find it such a shock to join the real world after college, when they no longer have student loans to fund such a posh lifestyle. No wonder most of this age group moves back in with mom and dad for some period after school. This goes back to my theme of expectations and figuring out what's realistic and what isn't.

I heard one university representative at the talk say that her college had to offer this lavish lifestyle because that’s what they have to do to compete for applicants. Having been an admissions officer, I understand the pressures schools face to attract applicants. I do wonder, though, about the college administrators and trustees who are perhaps allowing their educational missions to be compromised too much, the parents who are letting their kids pick a college based on a rock climbing wall or a cafeteria menu, and the magazine rankings that reward schools for increasing their expenditures per student. Something is out of whack.

17-year-olds are 17-year olds, and I don't fault them if they are still figuring out what their priorities are, how compound interest works, and what kind of life they want to be living five or ten or twenty years down the road. And it’s our job, as the ones with a bit more life experience, to help them think about those things (even if they're not always inclined to listen to us).

An eagle-eyed Ivey Files reader just sent me the following:

Hope all is well! I ran across this [USA Today] article on helicopter parents and thought it was right up your alley. In case you didn't see it, here is the link.

It amused/disturbed me to discover that there is a national advocacy/interest group for parents of college students. Is that really necessary?!

Wow.

There's lots of good stuff packed into that article, not least the following about a study conducted by UCLA about the role of parents on campus:

[R]esearchers found significant differences among students of different racial backgrounds. More than 43% of Latinos, for example, said their parents were involved too little in choosing college courses, compared with 37% of Asian students, 33% of black students, 29% of American Indian students and 19% of white students.

I've written elsewhere about how employers who complain about coddled college students and their intrusive helicopter parents need to cast their net more widely. I've been especially impressed by the self-sufficiency of people coming back to school from the military, as well as the children of immigrants, and children who have been working in a family business since they could walk. Those are just some examples. Their resumes might look a bit more unusual, but I don't think it's asking too much of employers to look a little harder. There are plenty of great "kids" out there whose parents haven't been hovering all the time.

Which reminds me... I've been meaning to share this article in the Washington Post by a Georgetown college student who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. Fascinating, and humbling.

The WSJ had a great interview recently with the VP of Industry Relations at the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) about how business schools are adapting to the preferences and quirks of Gen Y. She talks about the same tendencies I've noticed about Gen Y in the workplace ("Memo to Corporate America"), although it's clear to me that some of those tendencies have special significance for MBAs in particular. As I've asked here before: how do you develop leadership in MBA students when they're showing up at orientation with mommy and daddy, even at places like Harvard Business School? What does it mean when a generation of people expects to be doing CEO level work within a few years of graduation and thinks it's above grunt work?

On a related note: I had a conversation with a law school professor the other day who told me, in shock, how a parent had called to argue with her about a grade she had given a student on a contracts exam. I wonder whether those parents are also going to call up and complain to the judge when he rules against little Karen or little Jon on a 12(b)(6) motion? Not to mention that most parents aren't in a position to debate the finer points of contract law with a law school professor (have they even heard of promissory estoppel?), but that's where we are right now. I warned her that she is going to hear from many more parents in the coming years.