Undergraduate student perceptions of characteristics attributed to millennial generation college students and implications for university recruitment and retention

The millennial generation (individuals born between 1980 and 2000) began attending institutions of higher learning around 2000, and a number of authors have proposed how they will impact the university systems and how universities should respond. Several authors have suggested that students and their parents are scrutinizing universities more in an attempt to make sure their needs and/or desires are being met. Some are suggesting that universities need to place greater emphasis on meeting the demands of the consumers they already have and those they wish to attract. While this thought may be controversial to some, universities are spending a great deal on money on recruitment, and competition has increased. Howe and Strauss (2000 & 2003) propose that millennial generation students are different than their predecessors, and success in interaction with these students involves acknowledging and responding to seven characteristics they attribute to this population. The characteristics are special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured, and achieving. While general support for these characteristics exists, the opinions of college students as they relate to these characteristics do not exist. Additionally, the characteristics have been applied to the generation homogenously, and allowances for differences by groups have not been applied. This study assessed whether there were differences by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family history of education, and geographical area of primary and secondary education.
Undergraduate students enrolled in general education classes at Texas Tech University (n = 1,232) completed a voluntary survey that assessed their attitudes toward the seven characteristics assigned to them. They were asked to assess their agreement with the seven characteristics as they related to them personally and as they related to their peers. In addition, student satisfaction with their university experience was assessed in an attempt to identify factors that would aid universities in recruitment and retention.
Student agreement with the seven characteristics was relatively high for all of the characteristics except for team-oriented and sheltered. Statistically significant differences were found between generational self perception and generational peer perception for six of the seven characteristics, and significant differences for both self and peer perceptions for the seven characteristics were found by gender, ethnicity, family history of education, and geographical area of primary and secondary education. Additionally, a factor analysis produced eight factors related to student satisfaction, and differences between groups were found for the factors of satisfaction.