It’s an easy insult to throw. Politicians, pundits and parents of anybody born after the first woman accepted a serpent’s gift have said it.
Kids these days. They’re entitled.
The proof is right there in black and white. There’s a study from the University of California at Irvine that found that 30 percent of students expected B’s for simply going to lectures. Forty percent felt the same just for completing required readings. Trying hard counts, too, agreed 66 percent of those surveyed, who decided their effort should be tied to their grades.
Another study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that college students value self-esteem boosts over all other enjoyable activities, including sex, eating a favorite food, consuming alcohol, meeting with friends or receiving a paycheck. The study identified a link between those who almost addictively seek out self-esteem and those with a strong sense of entitlement, many of whom agreed with the statement that the world would be a better place if they were running it.
The entitlement of youth has seeped its sappy goo into pop culture, too. Many critics would have you believe that HBO’s “Girls” is the sign of end times and Lena Dunham and her narcissistic group of Brooklynite friends are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Dunham’s character is a 20-something Michigan native trying to make it big in the city two years after earning a bachelor’s in English—a decidedly selfish degree—when her parents decide to cut her off financially. “How could they?” she asks, much to her Baby Boomer critics’ laments.
Dunham’s nogoodnik kind have been protesting in the streets of Montreal since February, when the government announced plans to increase tuition rates. The proposed increase would almost double the cost to attend public universities in Quebec, from $2,168 to $3,793. As many as 310,000 Quebecois students have gone on strike, blocking teachers and other students from holding classes and marching through the streets.
And the people of Montreal supported them. On May 22, almost a quarter of Montreal’s population marched downtown in support of the students in what many have called the “single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.” The Quebecois seem to understand something about contemporary students that others have overlooked.
Maybe young people are not the entitled ones.
Consider the numbers. The grumpy Quebecois minority that hasn’t supported the students paid for college at much lower rates—they paid only $540 per year from 1968 to 1990. In the U.S., adjusted for inflation, a year of college cost an average of $7,685 in 1980, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Today, it’s more than double at $17,464.
Americans born in 1937 or earlier had earlier access to full Social Security benefits, allowing them to retire at age 65. Those born after 1959 cannot receive full benefits until age 67.
Older generations also paid less toward Social Security, as rates have nearly doubled since 1964.
Unemployment was better too—hovering between five and 10 weeks on average until the late 2000s, when it skyrocketed to nearly 25.
The studies might show that young Americans act like they’re deserved certain things. But the numbers reveal those who are actually entitled.
