Students are more focused on getting a job than getting a higher education

A changing student population has resulted in some interesting shifts in campus culture at MIT. Student protests have been replaced by a fixation on employability, says Samuel Jay Keyser

There hasn't been a major student protest or demonstration at MIT since 1991. I'm not counting a recent protest over meal plans. That one was small potatoes compared with the 1980s when MIT students protested about university investment in corporations doing business in South Africa, freedom of speech, workers' rights and landlordism.

Social scientists have given the generation of students who shun protest like the plague a name, "the Millennials". They are the ones who followed the Generation Xers , who were born between 1966 and 1980. They came on the scene between 1981 and 1988, and they fill the MIT classrooms now. They are the ones who were a twinkle in their parents' eyes while eight Gen Xers were arrested for building a shanty on the Kresge Oval. The Millennials don't protest.

Why not? It isn't as if there haven't been issues: the invasion of Iraq, 9/11, the sub-prime mortgage debacle, joblessness. Where did all the outrage go?

The reason, I believe, is that students are too focused on getting a job, and less so on getting an education. During a recent random faculty dinner that I hosted, faculty members from the schools of science and engineering complained about the attitude of present-day students. In their view, all they want to do is just what's necessary to get through a class. There's no fire in the belly to get to the bottom of a subject. Whatever fire there is burns solely for the purpose of getting through the subject and on to the next one and then, finally, a degree and "I'm outta here".

In their defence, it is worth noting that the current crop of MIT students were born at the end of the Reagan presidency, a presidency that marked the beginning of an unprecedented migration of wealth into the top 1% of the population and a concomitant loss of wealth at the bottom. Today's economic outlook is so distressing it is no wonder students focus concern on what they are going to do when the mortarboard they throw into the air comes back to earth.

But how does the absence of student protest at MIT jibe with the Occupy Wall Street (OCW) demonstrations emerging all over America? It seems that protest has left the campus for the street. Like Muhammad coming to the mountain, the campus is following them. I'm thinking of the likes of Joseph Stiglitz, Naomi Klein and Jeffrey Sachs addressing the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park. From the point of view of campus crisis managers, of course, that is a blessing. The action is taking place downtown, not downstairs. There is a certain irony in this. MIT has been a big supplier of financial sector workers. MIT graduates who have moved or soon will move on to Wall Street will find themselves leaving the eye of the hurricane for the storm outside, a complete reversal of 30 years ago.

It remains to be seen how much strength lies behind the current mobilisation of discontent with the distribution of income and therefore power in the United States and, for that matter, the world. My own guess is that OCW won't go away. Unlike the 1980s, the battle lines are being drawn precisely where they ought to be drawn. That makes the battle much more than symbolic.

Article from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/oct/14/university-students-focus-on-employability?fb=optOut