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The Truth about Millennials

The Truth about Millennials

By Bruce A. Flickinger
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
November 12, 2016

As a college professor, and a one-time active Anglican/Episcopal priest, who has come to know, with my academic and clergy colleagues, thousands of millennials, I must comment on the way millennials are getting caricatured. Millennials are getting a lot of bad press and criticism. Fallacious reasoning in the form of a sweeping generalization is tending to caricature all millennials as takers, lazy, raised being rewarded when the reward was unearned, unpatriotic, and prone to violence given possession of a self-esteem that was raised too high by parents and teachers, etc.

When millennials are caricatured this way, it suggests that those doing the caricaturing have little contact with millennials or the contact has been to a limited few who may manifest some or all the elements of the caricature.

For nine years as a college professor I have worked closely with millennials as have my academic colleagues. Together we have had exposure to thousands of millennials. This contact has shown that the caricature simply does not apply to the vast majority of millennials. Reaching percentages of 90% or higher, the millennials we know are nothing like what is said of them in the caricature.

Nearly all the millennials are enrolled in college full-time, and many of those are taking credit hours above the requisite number to be classified full-time. Academically they perform very well, nearly all higher than average. They evidence having studied, they get engaged in class discussions, and show they are very informed about what is going on in the world.

The millennials are NOT lazy. The millennials of my colleagues and me are very hard working. Many of them are raising families and often have several children. Many are married and have a spouse to assist but nearly as many are raising the children as a single parent. Many do not have other family close, like parents, grandparents, etc., to assist them. And they are doing this while being full-time students. In a few cases, they are taking care of an elderly, infirm, or disabled parent or other family member while raising their own family.

More than half of them to three fourths of them are also working jobs for a paycheck and in many cases working more than one job; again, this is while going to school full-time. Their employers consider them hard working, reliable, and committed. I have had students who have worked or are three jobs, not just one or two. And, again, they are in school full-time, and half of them are raising families at the same time. Most college students in the years of my undergraduate education did not have to work during the school year, only summers. I was one of the few that did have a part-time job.

They are very patriotic. They evidence a love for America, for our democratic system, understanding how it operates, and the need to actively participate in it. They evidence having deep concern about the same issues that older citizens have and have a wide variety of ideas about solutions to the problems the country faces.

Many have come to college, or returned to college, having served in the military. Each of the military forces have been and are represented: The Marines, Navy, Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard. Those who have served are White, Black, Native American, Hispanic, Asian, and Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, etc.

Everyone is working toward careers where they will not only, it is hoped, earn a living wage and can support a family (and few are planning to be millionaires or billionaires, but solidly middle class), and at the same time want to give back to the society they are part of. They want to leave the world a better place than it was when they arrived here. They are NOT takers.

They are idealistic to varying degrees, but their idealism is based on the values and virtues derived from our American Enlightenment philosophy and from their different religious traditions. Well over half who are religious are active in their religious communities, and the Roman Catholic students are especially so. At the same time their idealism is tempered by realism and pragmatism, much more so than the idealism of the baby-boomer generation, the generation I belong to.

They understand and seem more ready to accept and work within the realities of globalization and the profound changes being brought about by the enormous advances we are experiencing in technology. They recognize the world is changing in respect to the kinds of jobs that are coming to exist in the present and will continue to emerge as we move into the future. They are informed about international affairs. A sizable portion of my students are International Relations majors, a major that is growing. Many of these are dual major students, their International Relations major taken alongside a variety of other majors including Law Enforcement, Political Science, Pre-Law, and Business Administration. A few of the International Relations majors are also Education majors.

For too many the sad reality is one where when they graduate they are unable to find work in the career areas they have prepared for (some having to take minimum wage jobs while engaged in a long job search). At the same time, nearly all are coming out with enormous college debt, despite scholarships, grants, and the limited assistance most can receive from their parents (if they have parents, some do not). Only a tiny minority come from wealthy families; most come from struggling middle class and working class families where a limited amount of money to none is available to pay for a college education.

Nearly all the students who graduate are well qualified and worthy of being hired for good jobs in their career areas. They would make excellent employees for any employer and those who do get hired become quickly valued by their employers. Many employers struggle to retain them because, due to the debt load they carry, they may have to leave one company for another to increase their income to be able to support family and pay off their debt at the same time. Very few of the employed have any money for any extras and they live very modest life-styles, much more so than what was the case for my generation at the time of graduation from college. My own son is one of the millennials with a very good middle class job and a higher than average income having to pay off a sizable college debt and who is living very modestly (and he is single, living alone). He is not dependent upon us, his parents. His situation mirrors that of nearly all the millennials I have come to know over nearly a decade.

The millennials represent the political continuum of our country. Most identify with the two major parties, with a slightly larger number of these identifying Democrat over Republican. A significant number are not identified with a party and self-identify as Independent. In the most recent electoral season there were a limited few leaning Libertarian or toward the Green Party. The baby boomer generation in the 1960s and 1970s would have had more people leaning Libertarian or toward what then would be the equivalent of the Green Party.

Nearly all the millennials accept the reality of Global Warming and are interested and committed to doing something about it and sooner than later. A majority or more of the conservative Republican millennials accept Global Warning and the need to address this issue both nationally and internationally. In this they differ and depart from their Republican elders.

Admittedly, the millennials my colleagues and me are exposed to are those seeking a higher education. However, having meet some of their friends who are not in college or not interested in pursuing a college career (some are or have been in "trade schools" or other forms of advance education other than that of the liberal arts), or having received numerous reports from the millennials about their friends who are not of collegians, those millennials also are largely like collegiate friends.

Every generation has people who are lazy, who are takers, who may be uninterested in politics, sluggardly in work, who might prefer to draw a welfare check than a paycheck, but it is NOT the case that most millennials can be described this way, not even those who in small numbers are out protesting the results of the recent election.

My son-in-law, who graduated from a "trade" program rather than from a liberal arts college, manifests the same values, work ethic, commitments that my millennials do and, to support my millennial daughter (herself a college student) and my granddaughter, he works one to two jobs and sometimes has worked three. Only one of those in his field for which he trained while working one or two more. Sometimes he has not been able to work in his field but he has worked continually and worked hard. My daughter is white, he is black.

I find it offensive when millennials are caricatured as they are because it is off the mark and just wrong. It shows either ignorance on the part of others or it shows a commitment to engage in disinformation propaganda to advance a political agenda. Sadly, we have become a post-fact culture in many places and in a part of one political party. Over time this will not serve to preserve our democracy and our American way of life.

Bruce A. Flickinger, BA, MDiv has been an ordained Episcopal priest since 1979. He was active in parochial ministry from 1979 to 2005. He is presently Professor of Religion/Philosophy, at Flagler College, St. Augustine, Florida

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