Mindset List Gives Insight about Young Consumers

By Tom McBride & Ron Nief

American colleges and universities all over the world recently welcomed the class of 2011, and one has to wonder what the expectations will be for a generation who was born as the Cold War was ending. For them, a Russia with multiple political parties and a China with multiple business enterprises seems quite normal. They’ve grown up in a time of triumphant capitalism, where it’s common for stadiums to be named after corporations and where product placements have always been yet another clever way for companies to sell their wares.

Disclaimer: Now the Mindset List is not a chronological listing of things that happened in the year that the entering first-year students were born. Instead it is our way of identifying the worldview of 18 year-olds in the fall of 2007.


So, without further adieu, here's the list :

Tom McBride is a Professor of the Humanities for Beloit College, where he teaches Milton, Shakespeare, and critical theory. He has team-taught a variety of interdisciplinary courses with both classicists and anthropologists. He has published both critical essays and creative non-fiction in journals as diverse as Texas Studies in Language and Literature, The Baker Street Journal, and Two Cities. He is an editor of the Beloit College Mindset List.

Ron Nief has been director of public affairs at Beloit College in Wisconsin for the past ten years, following two decades at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has been communicating the work of higher education institutions for almost 40 years, starting with his alma mater, Boston College, in the late 1960s. He is the editor of several books and has written for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, the Gannett Newspapers and National Public Radio's Marketplace. He is a recipient of a Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America and a Distinguished Service Award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education District I. He created the Mindset List in 1998 and joins Tom McBride in many media appearances and talks throughout the year.