When coming home for a long weekend or a holiday, your parents and relatives immediately overwhelm you with warm welcomes. Before you can even put your bags down, they bombard you with the expected “how’s school?” question. But do they really want to know?
Flashes of crazy parties, caffeine facilitated all-nighters, and awkward brush-ins with your recent hookup come to mind. Worried your grandmother would drop dead listening to you simply sum up your week, let alone a semester, you resort to the standard “everything’s going well, classes are good” answer.
Although your parents know you’re omitting some details, do they really have an accurate sense of what goes on at school? Personally, my parents remind me that they, too, had their “wild” college days and reassure me that they understand how it works. But, was college 20 years ago really like the way it is today?
Looking back, the “typical” college experience has made some drastic transformations — some for the better and others not so much.
Technology: Obviously the technology available to college students has skyrocketed since the ‘80s, but have these “advancements” really helped? Twenty years ago, the floppy disk was essentially the peak of technology available to college students. We may look down on this as a disadvantage, but the lack of technology actually enhanced the social experience in college. Today, if you hop on a full campus bus, you can actually hear the sound of a pin drop. Why? Because all 30 kids are scrolling through Facebook on their phones, have ear buds in, or, God forbid their phone is dead, they wait anxiously to get out of such an “awkward” situation. It is sad to think that on a bus full of college students, no one can initiate a friendly conversation or make a friend without sending out a friend request.
Not only does the technology affect our generation socially, but also academically. With online classes we can essentially get a degree from the comfort of our own room. Virtual classrooms eliminate the opportunity to build relationships with both professors and other students. Although you can’t deny the convenience, physically going to class helped mold the college experience for generations before us.
Relationships: Sadly, I think relationships have been the most negatively affected aspect of college in the past 20 years. Most people in our parents’ generation met their spouses or life partners in college. How can that be possible today when the closest sign of commitment is being in a guy’s default picture? There definitely isn’t a shortage of casual sex in college today, but just the thought of a long-term, committed relationship seems absurd. Even the idea of a guy asking you to dinner or the movies seems unfathomable. Not only do guys avoid commitment like the plague, but also, in recent years, girls have started accepting this “fixed” mentality and adjusting their relationship standards to conform to these rules. This “no-strings-attached” idea seems great right now, but what will happen 10 years down the road? How will we make those lasting relationships?
Money: In the past, public universities were considered the affordable way to get a college education; however, in the past couple decades, the cost of going to college has reached new levels. According Bloomberg, since 1978, the costs of tuition and college fees have increased by 1,120 percent. Financial stresses looming over our heads definitely has an effect on the way we prioritize our time. Nothing is more frustrating than defending your grades to your parents. They reiterate the fact that the coursework was just as demanding when they were in school, but with college costing us nearly 12 times more, managing part-time jobs and budgeting our finances can easily interfere with our academic success.
Partying: Most of us have seen Animal House and, as difficult as it is to picture now, we know our parents did in fact let loose and party in college. However, I sincerely doubt it was anywhere near the degree of partying today’s generation does. According to CASA, the rate of excessive drinking in college students jumped 16 percent from 1993 to 2005. The abuse of prescription drugs among college students is even more appalling. According the CASA, prescription drug abuse increased by a drastic 343 percent from 1993 to 2005, referring specifically to painkillers. Cocaine and club drugs, such as ecstasy and MDMA, have also grown in popularity on college campuses across the United States. Our parent’s may think they’ve seen it all, but the social pressures and party scenes in college today go far and beyond the occasional keg stand.
Although most college kids, including myself, agree college has been and continues to provide some of the best times of our lives, it’s important that we take a step back and see how all of this is going to affect us in the near future. The four years we spend in college will mold us into adults, and looking at how it shaped our parents’ future, it’s hard not to think about how our own college experience will affect us later in life. Considering the evolution of the college experience, how will these next few years change your transition into adulthood?
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