Muzzling Potential by Steve Watters on 09/27/2006 at 3:00 PM

Cultural observers tell us today's teens and twentysomethings have the potential to be the next great generation. The book Millennials Rising says that "today's kids are on track to become a powerhouse generation, full of technology planners, community shapers, institution builders, and world leaders, perhaps destined to dominate the twenty-first century like today's fading and ennobled G.I. Generation dominated the twentieth."

So, how are America's storied institutions of higher learning doing in cultivating all that raw potential? Not so good.

Yesterday, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute released a troubling report called "The Coming Crisis in Citizenship." The broad study of more than 14,000 students shows that "colleges and universities across America including some of the most expensive and elite in the United States, are failing to add to their graduates' understanding of America's history and essential institutions."

Amazingly many schools such as Yale, Duke, UVA, Georgetown, Brown and others had seniors do more poorly than incoming freshmen -- showing that students were actually slipping during their time there. As a result, one of ISI's recommendation is to hold "higher education more accountable to its mission and fundamental responsibilities to prepare its students to be informed, engaged participants in a democratic republic."

Such accountability would require many higher education leaders to humbly ask if they have put biases from their own generational agendas ahead of properly cultivating the promise and potential of a new generation of leaders.

HT to Opinion Journal

Muzzling Potential by Steve Watters on 09/27/2006 at 3:00 PM

Cultural observers tell us today's teens and twentysomethings have the potential to be the next great generation. The book Millennials Rising says that "today's kids are on track to become a powerhouse generation, full of technology planners, community shapers, institution builders, and world leaders, perhaps destined to dominate the twenty-first century like today's fading and ennobled G.I. Generation dominated the twentieth."

So, how are America's storied institutions of higher learning doing in cultivating all that raw potential? Not so good.

Yesterday, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute released a troubling report called "The Coming Crisis in Citizenship." The broad study of more than 14,000 students shows that "colleges and universities across America including some of the most expensive and elite in the United States, are failing to add to their graduates' understanding of America's history and essential institutions."

Amazingly many schools such as Yale, Duke, UVA, Georgetown, Brown and others had seniors do more poorly than incoming freshmen -- showing that students were actually slipping during their time there. As a result, one of ISI's recommendation is to hold "higher education more accountable to its mission and fundamental responsibilities to prepare its students to be informed, engaged participants in a democratic republic."

Such accountability would require many higher education leaders to humbly ask if they have put biases from their own generational agendas ahead of properly cultivating the promise and potential of a new generation of leaders.

HT to Opinion Journal