Campus to clients: adapting accounting education to the generations; working with the millennials.

• Author: Manly, Tracy S.

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THE CHANGING CHARACTERISTICS OF college students provide a challenge for accounting educators and employers. This column creates a profile from recent research of the current group of traditional students (born between 1983 and 1996) often called Millennials, Generation Y, or Echo Boomers. Based on their unique characteristics, this column suggests specific teaching techniques to better engage these students in the learning process. Employers should also find these techniques beneficial in working with and training Millennials.

Characteristics of Millennials

The Millennial generation is one of the most studied groups: Its members have been tracked by researchers studying their effects on advertising, American politics, and the business community. With businesses hiring consultants to learn how to deal with this group, accounting educators and practitioners should also take note of the characteristics of this cohort of students. The following characteristics of Millennials have been drawn from current research and reviews, as well as from Millennials themselves in blog entries posted to such websites as Employee Evolution (http://employeeevolution.com/) and Brazen Careerist (www.brazencareerist.com/).

I am special: In a report on CBS's 60 Minutes, "The 'Millennials' Are Coming" (November 11, 2007, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/08/60minutes/main3475200.shtml), Morley Safer referred to Millennials as "narcissistic praise hounds" with doting parents and trophies for everyone, making this group hungry for constant praise. Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before (Free Press 2006), found that two-thirds of college students were above average on an index of narcissism. But they do not want empty praise. What this group really wants is face time with the boss.

I have no secrets: Millennials are more likely to share personal information such as finances and income (Williams, "Not-So-Personal Finance," New York Times (April 27, 2008)). In a 2007 study of the Millennial generation by the Pew Research Center, 51% of respondents stated that to be famous was an important goal in life, second only to being rich ("A Portrait of 'Generation Next': How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics" (January 16, 2007), www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=25476). Over half (54%) use social networking websites regularly. At the same time, almost three-fourths agreed that there is too much personal information posted on...