ACUHO-I News Blog

The Survey of Entering Student Engagement, (SENSE) the first-year student, community college counterpart to the National Survey of Student Engagement is still in its formative stages. However, SENSE results have already suggested issues for further study.

SENSE’s findings, released last week, suggest that first-year community college students don’t take advantage of the campus resources because they don’t know about them. Most students were able to register for classes and get other necessary paperwork completed, but didn’t know about remedial courses, tutoring, or their adviser’s ability to assist with schedule planning and prioritizing.

“It is also not deliberately designed to make readers feel really old!”

That’s a disclaimer from the introduction to the 2008 Beloit College Mindset List from the study authors, Ron Nief, Director of Public Affairs and Tom McBride, Keefer Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English. Intentional or not, however, that’s the result.

This year’s freshmen-the class of 2012-enter college with the following life experience:

• Seinfeld has always existed.
• The doctor has always used an ear thermometer for temperature-taking.
• The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno.
• IBM has never made typewriters.
• Harry Potter would be a college freshman now. (If you needcollege after finishing at Hogwart’s.)

Now that we’ve tortured ourselves with that (more at the link if you’re masochistic), this 2000 grad (that’s two years before the first Beloit Mindset for those of you keeping score) is going to take a Centrum Silver (circa. 1990) and lie down for a little while.

The youth…they are so young.