Blog Archives

THE ECONOMIC VIRTUES OF MILLENNIALS  Tom McBride (Delivered on September 15 at the De Meo/Schneider Investment Conference in Chicago) Deidre McCloskey is a renowned economic historian at the University of Illinois right here in Chicago. One of her more striking ideas is that the virtues of different social groups are strongly determined by their economic status. For instance, the peasant class, having no prospects for financial gain, glommed onto the virtue of humility, linked to the idea that God would reward them for their humility someday in Heaven. For the aristocratic class, whose financial prosperity was assured, courage became a dominant virtue. They who have everything only lack the military adventure of becoming warriors, on battlefields where their bravery will   Read on »

Beloit College Releases the Mindset List for This Year’s Entering Class of First-Year College Students, The Class of 2020 Beloit, Wis. — We have had the NOW generation…get ready for the RIGHT NOW generation, entering college this fall. This fall’s entering college students, the class of 2020, were born in 1998 and cannot remember a time when they had to wait for anything. They also can’t recall a time when the United States was not at war, or when someone named Bush or Clinton was not running for office. Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students about to enter college. In   Read on »

Click on the image to your left for the Amazon link to our latest book: THE MILLENNIAL PROMISE: 40 Tips from The Mindset List®. It’s a terrific guide to all phases of Millennial education–from classroom motivation to high tech instruction to the art of giving assignments.   Think of it as The Elements of Style for Millennial education! It’s a concise little manual for teachers, counselors, administrators–useful for anyone involved in the education and training of America’s most talked-about generation.

OUR ANNUAL PARENTS’ ADVISORY  It’s a new year, with new babies born every few seconds. Here are twenty questions that new parents will have to answer over the next couple of decades, as they raise the college class of 2038. #1: What was it like when you first saw robots flipping burgers at McDonald’s? #2: Are you telling me that Senator Clinton’s father used to be president, too? #3: What was a family doctor? #4: Why do all these pharmacies and food markets have steeples, like churches? #5: Why did you make we wait until I was seven before giving me a mobile phone? #6: When did the first robot colony land on the moon? #7: How long have people   Read on »

Author contacts:                        Ron Nief (608-770-2625)                                                       niefr@beloit.edu                   Tom McBride (608-312-9508)                                                       mcbridet@beloit.edu                                                       Charles Westerberg (608-225-8100)                                                       weserbergc@beloit.edu   Beloit College Releases The Mindset List for This Year’s Entering Class of First-Year College Students, The Class of 2019 Beloit, Wis. — Members of the entering college class of 2019 were mostly born in 1997 and have never licked a postage stamp, have assumed that WiFi is an entitlement, and have no first-hand experience of Princess Diana’s charismatic celebrity. Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. For this year’s entering class there has always been Google; Email, informal to previous   Read on »

THE MINDSET LIST® SPEAKS! Looking for Great and Time-Tested Public Speakers?  Tom McBride and Ron Nief, co-authors of The Beloit College Mindset List® and The Mindset Lists of American History (Wiley, 2011) and The Mindset List of the Obscure (Sourcebooks, 2014) speak frequently about the generation gap around the country and to a wide variety of organizations.  We’ve spoken, led workshops  and delivered the keynote addresses to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national convention, to library associations, museum staff, and to educators at all levels, to state retirement fund administrators and to to educators and specialists dealing with youth and financial literacy,   And all this is but a small sample. We work with our   Read on »

Here’s a Mindset List® Blog, Updated From Time to Time To respond, write to mcbridet@beloit.edu  Today’s Kids Are Terrific!  The older generation often despairs of the young Millennials. They fiddle with their smart phones and never look an elderly person in the eye. They spend countless hours idling on the Internet. By these accounts the kids are terrible, and America is in trouble. But the kids are OK. Do they text all the time? Yes, of course, but their ability to squeeze a lot of information into a small space is the basis for superb academic discipline. No less than Sherlock Holmes said, of the brief telegram, that it forced him to state exactly what he meant. Millennials are ready to   Read on »