Checking the trends
15/05/14 05:43
I am intrigued by the way that I get information these days. Sometimes, when I am doing research I go directly to the studies and professional journals. Google Scholar makes this process a lot faster than it was in the days of going to libraries for access to journals to which I do not regularly subscribe. But it is as likely that I will read an article on a website that leads me backwards through a bit of a maze to the original research. For example, I recently read an article in the online version of the Washington Post about a study that showed that millennials are not as narcissistic as they have been thought to be. The article referenced a science web site. When I went to the web site, I found a reference to the study which was published in a professional journal. It is possible to get to the original source eventually, but the route is a bit more convoluted. The problem is that many people never go to the source and often the information becomes significantly twisted and reinterpreted.
My blogs, however, aren’t exactly research papers. They are, for the most part, opinion pieces. Still, I like to credit sources and be as accurate as I can.
So, the research conducted by Emily Bianchi of Emory University was published in the journal Psychological Science and that article was referenced on the science site, Science and Us. That is where Mark Berman picked up the study and crafted some of its information into an op-ed piece he wrote for the Washington Post. I don’t subscribe to the Post, but caught the article on the Post Nation web site.
There is a fair amount of information recycling before it gets to you.
Anyway what caught my eye about the study is that it discovered a direct relationship between the economy and the level of narcissism. The study starts with what is an obvious observation to those of us who have worked with our elders. People who were born during the Great Depression are less selfish and less narcissistic than some of the folks who were born later. The study then tracks levels of selfishness in relationship with the economy and comes to the conclusion that people who enter adulthood during recessions are less likely to be narcissistic later in life than people who start working during more financially comfortable times.
The study would lead one to believe that despite the assertions that the millennial generation is viewed as one of the most narcissistic generations in history, the opposite might be true. I was heartened to read the article. This fits well with generational theory, that posits that the generational cycle repeats every four generations, or about every eighty years. That would make the millennial generation another society-building generation like the World War II generation. The problem with social theories, however, is that social relationships are rarely as clean or consistent as sociologists predict.
I am, however, inclined to believe parts of the study. It does seem to me in my experience that young adults now entering the work force are more interested in serving others and less narcissistic that some of the folks of preceding generations. I think there is a small resurgence of leadership for community organizations and service groups being led by recent college graduates. It seems to be a very good trend.
Another study, however, set of alarm bells for me. Paul Tough, writing for the New York Times Magazine recently published an interesting case study that cites several other studies showing that the students currently graduating from college are from the most economically advantaged families in our nation. Despite what we want to believe - that college education is the great social equalizer - high performing high school students that come from low and middle income families are far less likely to graduate than those whose families are wealthy.
The obvious is part of the problem. College is expensive. Students who have adequate financial resources are less likely to get detailed by family obligations that keep they from attending college, complicated financial-aid forms, problems meeting daily expenses, and an overwhelming burden of debt. But the situation is even more complex than that. Low and middle income students who do perform well in high school and who are admitted to college are less likely to finish college. More than 40 percent of American students who are admitted to college have not earned a degree after six years. If you include community college students in that statistic the dropout rate is more than half - worse than any other country except Hungary.
Not graduating and leaving college with the added burden of student debt is a double challenge for economic success. It is an age old story: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The economic mobility afforded by a college degree is well documented. What is not well documented are studies of comparative graduation rates of colleges and universities. The research on that one is beginning to be clear as well. Families with plenty of financial resources can afford to shop for prestige when shopping for colleges. For the rest of us, paying attention to the college’s graduation rate may be a critical factor in the success of a student.
That information isn’t easy to find on college web sites. South Dakota Colleges love to tout their acceptance rates. Black Hills State University, for example, is quick to report that 94.2% of applicants are accepted. What they don’t report is that 38.5% of freshmen do not enroll in a second year. I got that number from the US News College Compass ratings. I still haven’t found the actual graduation rate, but suspect that it is less than 50% based on the freshman statistics.
It takes more than being accepted to college to reap the advantage of increased economic mobility afforded by a college degree. We have no small amount of work to do to reform support systems and improve graduation rates.
If financial struggles produce less narcissistic adults, it seems that the opposite might be true. Colleges that specialize in graduating only wealthy students might be a recipe for leaders in business and industry who are more self-absorbed than others.
The research is not yet complete, but there some alarming trends are appearing.
My blogs, however, aren’t exactly research papers. They are, for the most part, opinion pieces. Still, I like to credit sources and be as accurate as I can.
So, the research conducted by Emily Bianchi of Emory University was published in the journal Psychological Science and that article was referenced on the science site, Science and Us. That is where Mark Berman picked up the study and crafted some of its information into an op-ed piece he wrote for the Washington Post. I don’t subscribe to the Post, but caught the article on the Post Nation web site.
There is a fair amount of information recycling before it gets to you.
Anyway what caught my eye about the study is that it discovered a direct relationship between the economy and the level of narcissism. The study starts with what is an obvious observation to those of us who have worked with our elders. People who were born during the Great Depression are less selfish and less narcissistic than some of the folks who were born later. The study then tracks levels of selfishness in relationship with the economy and comes to the conclusion that people who enter adulthood during recessions are less likely to be narcissistic later in life than people who start working during more financially comfortable times.
The study would lead one to believe that despite the assertions that the millennial generation is viewed as one of the most narcissistic generations in history, the opposite might be true. I was heartened to read the article. This fits well with generational theory, that posits that the generational cycle repeats every four generations, or about every eighty years. That would make the millennial generation another society-building generation like the World War II generation. The problem with social theories, however, is that social relationships are rarely as clean or consistent as sociologists predict.
I am, however, inclined to believe parts of the study. It does seem to me in my experience that young adults now entering the work force are more interested in serving others and less narcissistic that some of the folks of preceding generations. I think there is a small resurgence of leadership for community organizations and service groups being led by recent college graduates. It seems to be a very good trend.
Another study, however, set of alarm bells for me. Paul Tough, writing for the New York Times Magazine recently published an interesting case study that cites several other studies showing that the students currently graduating from college are from the most economically advantaged families in our nation. Despite what we want to believe - that college education is the great social equalizer - high performing high school students that come from low and middle income families are far less likely to graduate than those whose families are wealthy.
The obvious is part of the problem. College is expensive. Students who have adequate financial resources are less likely to get detailed by family obligations that keep they from attending college, complicated financial-aid forms, problems meeting daily expenses, and an overwhelming burden of debt. But the situation is even more complex than that. Low and middle income students who do perform well in high school and who are admitted to college are less likely to finish college. More than 40 percent of American students who are admitted to college have not earned a degree after six years. If you include community college students in that statistic the dropout rate is more than half - worse than any other country except Hungary.
Not graduating and leaving college with the added burden of student debt is a double challenge for economic success. It is an age old story: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The economic mobility afforded by a college degree is well documented. What is not well documented are studies of comparative graduation rates of colleges and universities. The research on that one is beginning to be clear as well. Families with plenty of financial resources can afford to shop for prestige when shopping for colleges. For the rest of us, paying attention to the college’s graduation rate may be a critical factor in the success of a student.
That information isn’t easy to find on college web sites. South Dakota Colleges love to tout their acceptance rates. Black Hills State University, for example, is quick to report that 94.2% of applicants are accepted. What they don’t report is that 38.5% of freshmen do not enroll in a second year. I got that number from the US News College Compass ratings. I still haven’t found the actual graduation rate, but suspect that it is less than 50% based on the freshman statistics.
It takes more than being accepted to college to reap the advantage of increased economic mobility afforded by a college degree. We have no small amount of work to do to reform support systems and improve graduation rates.
If financial struggles produce less narcissistic adults, it seems that the opposite might be true. Colleges that specialize in graduating only wealthy students might be a recipe for leaders in business and industry who are more self-absorbed than others.
The research is not yet complete, but there some alarming trends are appearing.