GEN X PARENTS GEN Z STUDENTS THEY ARE

GEN X PARENTS GEN Z STUDENTS THEY ARE ON YOUR CAMPUSES NOW COMING TO YOUR PROGRAM SOON

Disclaimer…. • We do not know everything there is to know about generations and their unique characteristics • What I share here may or may not apply to you. • That’s especially true if you’re looking for any real wisdom. • I’ve only been in this game for a few years. • There’s still a TONNE I don’t know or understand. • I’m constantly bewildered by my students. • Fortunately, I know lots of more people whom I can turn to for explanations, though sometimes it’s hard to ask because I don’t entirely understand what it is that I don’t understand. • Students are completely different from when we went to school.

Basically, history repeats itself. Battlestar Galactica said it best: “All this happened before and all of this will happen again. ” Every generation has its own boy bands, vampires, mean girls, and dystopian books/movies.

In America, each generation is a new people Alexis de Tocqueville, 1830 23. 4 years – average span of a generation 15 – number of American generations 4 – number of generational cycles 4 – number of generations within cycle

MILLENNIAL CYCLE • NAME + BIRTH YEARS = PERSONALITY • BABY BOOM + 1943 -1960 IDEALIST = • 13 TH (GEN X) + 1961 -1981 = REACTIVE • MILLENNIAL (GEN Y) + 1982 -2004 = CIVIC • HOMELAND (GEN Z) + 2005 -PRESENT = ADAPTIVE

The Generations Currently Touring Your Campus No matter what you call them (i. Generation, Digital Natives, Centennials), you must know that the next generation of prospective students are creeping up on us.

GEN X PARENTS

Members of Generation. X are tough. Where we called Boomer parents helicopter…. .

Parents these days are stealth: • you don’t hear them coming, • they drop a bomb and fly away.

The major takeaway about Gen. X parents is that they don’t trust institutions due to all the social upheaval in their youth and young adulthood. That’s a pretty tough battle to fight when you’re selling an institution that’s been around 150 years.

GEN Z CHILDREN

The children of Gen. X parents: Homeland/Generation. Z. They’ve been raised in crisis and grown up overprotected by freaked out parents. …found that on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, most parents today don’t trust that we’re doing the basics well - food, housing, safety. If we can address these things up front and help them feel secure, then they’ll engage in conversations about academic programs and transformational experiences.

The children of Gen. X parents: Homeland/Generation. Z. We also must be prepared for how technologically advanced they are as a generation. We need quick and easy access to wifi, web that is optimized for touchscreen phones and tablets, user-created content and more video and images (rather than web pages full of text).

WHAT WE KNOW AND WHERE WE CAN FIND MORE INFORMATION

NOT MILLENNIALS AND CO-PURCHASING SAFE/SAFETY OUTCOMES