The poet Longfellow once wrote, "How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams!" And though George Bernard Shaw would respond that youth is wasted on the young, youthful idealism remains a mainstay of our culture and one of the most precious things to be guarded and nurtured by education. So it's a bit depressing to read this year's edition of the American Freshman Survey, now in its 38th year from UCLA. Seems that slightly fewer than 40 percent of American college freshman now think it's important to "develop a meaningful philosophy of life," which is a silly way of describing the important youthful search for one's intellectual and moral bearings. But the most students ever, 73 percent, now feel it's important to be "very well-off financially." Another fascinating tidbit: 47 percent of all freshmen report that they have an A average, despite an increase in the total number of students attending college and annual declines in the average weekly number of hours spent studying.
"College students found to value money over all," by Peter Y. Hong, Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2004 (registration required)