David Brooks spent time with the best and the brightest students at Princeton University and found some surprising (and disconcerting) things about the character of “America’s future elite”:
Today’s elite kids are likely to spend their afternoons and weekends shuttling from one skill-enhancing activity to the next. By the time they reach college, they take this sort of pace for granted, sometimes at a cost. In 1985 only 18 percent of college freshmen told the annual University of California at Los Angeles freshman norms survey that they felt “overwhelmed.” Now 28 percent of college freshmen say they feel that way.
But in general they are happy with their lot. Neil Howe and William Strauss surveyed young people for their book Millennials Rising (2000); they found America’s young to be generally a hardworking, cheerful, earnest, and deferential group. Howe and Strauss listed their respondents’ traits, which accord pretty well with what I found at Princeton: “They’re optimists … They’re cooperative team players … They accept authority … They’re rule followers.” The authors paint a picture of incredibly wholesome youths who will correct the narcissism and nihilism of their Boomer parents.
From April 2001. These undergraduates were in the middle of an amazing economic boom – just after the technology-fuelled boom of the past 5 years and just before the financial services for the next 5.
The article is massive – several thousand words – but it qualifies as a must-read for its depth, insight and clarity in writing.