The Deluded Generation

In October 2010, I gave a Fidelity Leadership talk at NC State entitled "Reset Generation". It was a lecture on what the next-generation workforce was like, using videogames as an explanatory metaphor. The crux of the talk was that the next generation's workforce isn't so much "The Entitlement Generation" as they are "The Deceived Generation". I noted:

"As an employer, you will be the site of the first collision between the world that Gen Y was told to expect and the real world that awaits them: The reality of being young in America in the Great Recession is quite bleak."

  
Unfortunately, since 2010, the situation hasn't gotten better - it's gotten worse. Further confirmation of the ill situation came today in the form of a Yahoo! News ran an article today called "The Deluded Generation" which cites the following:

Numerous studies have found that today’s average young person thinks he possesses above-average intelligence.

Despite feeling smarter than their parents’ generation, today’s students self-reportedly study for fewer hours. On the bright side, they get better grades because of grade inflation.

“A third of high school students graduate with an A average, even though standardized test performance is unchanged or down and students actually study for fewer hours than they once did,” wrote Julia Twenge, a psychologist and author of the book Generation Me, in a previous statement to The DC News Foundation. “Students are getting better grades for less work, which is probably one reason why they feel so confident.”

The trend of self-delusion among teenagers is a particularly American problem, Kosakowski noted.

“The only things our kids rank the highest in are confidence in their abilities,” he said. “Math, science, and everything else has gone down.”