DID YOU KNOW?



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PLATTSBURGH — It's all about me.

What I want and when I want it.

I am special and I deserve attention appropriate to my uniqueness, just like mom and dad have always told me.

And oh, yeah, professor, I am paying for these classes, so if I don't want to attend I won't. If I missed notes, I'll just hound you through your e-mail and expect a response, along with the notes, immediately.

Sound self-absorbed?

Well, according to an array of studies, narcissism and feelings of entitlement among college students, specifically members of Generation Y, are rapidly rising.

inventory score
College students are apparently more narcissistic and self-centered than ever before, according to a study conducted across the United States under the leadership of Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego University and author of the book, "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable than Ever Before."

A total of 16,475 students were involved in the study and scored 30 percent higher on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory evaluation than students in 1982.

CENTER OF ATTENTION
Students said they liked being the center of attention and that if they ruled the world it would be a better place.

Many of them admitted being more concerned with grades and success than considering those around them.

"I think all of that is definitely true," student Andrea LaJoie said of the findings.

"I've been going to college six years and been a teaching assistant, and kids would skip class, and I would get tons of e-mails asking for notes or a PowerPoint."

LaJoie settled in the area after receiving her undergraduate degree from Plattsburgh State and is attending graduate school at Wheelock College in Boston.

"I definitely think many students feel entitled and are more self-centered."

LaJoie said she's not that way.

SEEN SIGNS
"Yeah, I have run into it occasionally but very seldom in my classes," said J.W. Wiley, director of Plattsburgh State's Center for Diversity, Pluralism and Inclusion and a lecturer in philosophy.

"I have somewhat of a reputation as being somewhat of a demanding professor, and because of that I don't get a lot of lightweights in my class."

TECHNOLOGY EFFECT
Tom Moran, distinguished service professor and director of the Institute for Ethics/Public Life, tends to think of Plattsburgh State students as likable, warm hearted and open.

But he has noticed technology has changed interactions between professors and students.

"Students e-mail where they would not have called. It used to be pretty rare for a student to call me on the phone."

Moran warned there has been a drift toward consumerism in higher education, with students seeing themselves as consumers and colleges seeing them as customers.

"What it does is it takes the complex relationship between a student and teacher engaged in a life journey to its mastery of knowledge and reduces it to a kind of market transaction."

This drift toward consumerism has the capacity to undermine the deeper value and meaning in higher education.

"I don't observe this sense of entitlement and narcissism among our students," Moran said, "but it is an attitude that is perhaps growing in higher education, and it is a reflection of broader trends in our society."

RELATIONSHIPS
Moran feels it's vital that the relationship between professor and student be more profound than one with a customer.

Wiley also believes in forming a unique relationship with students. He finds the way he structures his classes helps him avoid the narcissistic student characteristics found in the studies.

"In my film class, we tack our students in shoulder to shoulder, and it's not just me as a professor in front of them. We have anywhere from 4 to 12 TAs on any given day, so it is not as easy for them to text and float."

At the same time, he admitted that as a student himself, enrolled in a doctoral program, it can be easy to float if a professor is not engaging.

"This generation of students with laptops and text messaging, they have a whole lot of things at their disposal that can distract them and take them to other places," Wiley said.

"If you don't understand that and build a reality that countermands that, you can fall prey to it."

Cynthia Frisby, a faculty member of the Missouri School of Journalism who has completed several nationally recognized research projects, noticed her students on MySpace during lectures.

PARENT INFLUENCE
Some of the research places the blame on parents who have told their children since infancy they were special, resulting in youth coming of age with a sense of entitlement and the expectation they should continue to be told how special they are. Researchers say this can be traced back to the so-called "Self-Esteem Movement" of the 1980s.

"I'm an only child and was always told that by my parents," LaJoie said. "But I grew up poor, and my parents and I had to work hard."

A study co-authored by Laura Buffardi, a doctoral student in psychology, suggests online social networking sites such as Facebook are used in a self-promoting way. They found that the number of Facebook friends and wall posts is consistent with how narcissists behave in the real world with numerous shallow relationships.

LaJoie agreed that technology such as Twitter seems narcissistic in that the whole point is letting the world know what you are doing from moment to moment.

"It could be attention seeking."

She pointed out that she saw more self-involved behavior in private than public schools.

"I went to a private school two years, and a lot of the students' parents were paying for their classes," LaJoie said.

"The students didn't see it as their responsibility."

E-mail Stephen Bartlett at: sbartlett@pressrepublican.com