Upcraft, M.L. and Kramer, G.L. (eds.). First-Year Academic Advising. National Resource Center for the Freshman Year Experience, 1995.

As American higher education approaches the new millennium, it is becoming increasingly clear that significant challenges confront educators if entering students are to realize their educational goals. Just as preceding generations have been shaped by defining moments, demographic and socioeconomic trends, world events, educational reform movements, and technological explosion, the abilities, needs, and attitudes of the Millennium Generation, (defined by Owe and Strauss, 1993, as the 76 million individuals 'who will be born between 1982 and 2003), have been and are being profoundly shaped by events and trends taking place in the last two decades of the 20th century. To think that any projections or predictions about students entering college in the year 2000 can be made with certainty is a pompous claim. It is possible, however, to support the hypothesis that this entering class will differ from and be more diverse than entering classes which preceded them. Viewed at a single point in time from inside the academy, these changes are incremental and almost imperceptible. Yet, when viewed over time, the significance of these incremental changes cannot be overlooked.

The purpose of this chapter, then, is to support. the hypothesis that students entering college in the year 2000 will be unlike those entering 'in 1980 or even 1990. Through analysis of trends and projections related to high school graduates, college enrollments, academic performance, secondary educational experiences, the American family unit, and student aspirations and expectations, a template for the entering class of 2000 will be crafted. Knowing full well that change is the only certainty, one writes with the uneasy. suspicion that, almost as these words are written, a defining event may alter the shape or size of the template, making it less useful than when it was crafted.

The precipitous decline in numbers of high school graduates, which began in 1980 when the last of the baby boom generation entered college, finally reversed direction in 1994 and began what is projected to be a steady increase in high school graduates well into the first decade of the 21st century. Between 1990 and 2000, demographers project that there will be a 12.5% increase in high school graduates throughout the nation (Western Interstate Commission for status, age, programs of study, level of study, and fugher Education et al., 1993). This positive projection for high school graduates in the year 2000 (2,658,040) will still fall short of the number of public high school graduates in 1980 (2,755,512), and it will not be until the year 2004 that the number of graduates exceeds the 1980 figure. A second consideration is that although there will be a steady increase nationally in high school graduates, there is great variability both among regions and among states within each region. Table 1 shows that the greatest regional growth in numbers of graduates will take place in the West (+34.6/o) and that none of the other regions can expect growth equal to the national average of 12.5%. In addition, state changes in high school graduates between 1990 and 2000 range from -9.3% (West Virginia) to 65.6% (Nevada). To a great extent, then, since nearly 75% of undergraduate students attend college in the state in which they reside, change in the number of high school graduates in a given state will have a profound effect on the pool of traditional-age students in the entering class of the year 2000.

Note. From High School Graduates: Projections by State, 1992-2009, by Western Interstate Conunission for Higher Education, Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, & College Board,1993, Boulder, CO: Author.

Capturing even the most basic demographic characteristics related to the composition of the entering class of the year 2000 is fraught with complications. While federal government publications such as the Condition of Education (U. S. Department of Education, 1992) and the Digest of Educational Statistics (U.S. Department of Education, 1994) provide comprehensive data on the gender, status, age, programs of study, level of study, and racial-ethnic background of college students, those data focus on general college enrollment and, thus, are not first-year specific, And while the various studies conducted by Dey, Astin, and Korn (1991) focus on the American freshman, they primarily concern traditional-age, first-year students attending school full-time.

In addition, the projection of enrollments of first-year students is clouded by potentially shifting college-going rates. Although the national college-going rate of traditional-age students has increased steadily throughout the 20th century, it is not possible to predict with certainty if that overall rate will continue to increase, plateau, or even decline. In one scenario, for instance, steady college participation rates of traditionally underrepresented groups may actually result in a decline in overall college participation because underrepresented cohorts, particularly African Americans and Hipanic Americans, are growing at faster rates than the population as a whole.

Finally, issues of semantics confound this overview. For instance, is the definition of an adult learner chronological or is it determined by length of time spent away from formal learning? Or, what is a full-time student? Finally, how are students of mixed racial and ethnic descent accounted for in the data? In spite of these caveats, it is possible to capture college enrollment information which indicates changing patterns in gender, status, racial/ethnic background, and age in college enrollments between 1980 and 2000. Those changes are reported in Table 2.

Table 2

As one might conjecture from the data on high school graduates, the age composition of the undergraduate student population will shift slightly downward between 1990 and 2000 due primarily to a 12.5% increase in numbers of high school graduates during that decade. The projected 3.2% gain between 1990 and the year 2000 returns the under-21 age cohort to 1980 levels. Yet, for the age cohort of 22-29 year-olds, there is a marked decline between 1990 (30.4%) and the year 2000 when it is projected that 25.5% of college undergraduates will be 22-29 year-olds. During the same span, however, the percentage of undergraduates aged 30 and over will increase by just under two percent. Although these data are both clear and explainable, projections on the age composition of students entering college for the first time are non-existent.

One could refer to Dey, Astin, and Korn's (1991) data to conclude that more than 90% of first time college students are below the age of 19. Yet, these data are derived from full-time, traditional-age, first-year students, and it is, widely acknowledged that a greater percentage of adult students participate in higher education on a part-time basis. Also, the lack of a standard definition of an adult student leads to a lack of consistency in the ,. design, collection, and reporting of data regarding these students. Simply put, in the absence of a commonly held definition of an adult student, it is not possible to discern how many are in a first-year class, how many are first-time students, and how many are returning to higher education to continue as first-year students. No one doubts that there are many "older" students in first-year classes or that the developmental needs of "older" students are somewhat different from more traditional-age students. But, because of these problems, the remaining portions of this chapter will focus on describing the characteristics and attributes of traditional-age students who will become the entering students of the year 2000. Readers with an interest in the characteristics and needs of adult students are encouraged to refer to the chapter by Creamer, Polson, and Ryan on adult learners in this monograph or to Kasworm and Pike (1994) for an excellent summary of research on the background characteristics and academic performance of adult students.

The U.S. Department of Education (1989) projects that there will be a slight decline in the percentage of undergraduate women enrolled in college, a reversal of a trend which began in 1978 when women first accounted for more than half of all undergraduate enrollment. By the year 2000, it is projected that 54.9% of undergraduate college students will be women, down an imperceptible 0.3% from 1990.

The U.S. Department of Education (1989) also projects a reversal in the percentage of undergraduate students enrolled full-time, a characteristic which has been in decline for more than two decades. In fact, the reversal in this trend closely parallels the increases in high school graduates which began in 1993. Indeed there appears to be a direct relationship between the number of high school graduates in a given year and the percentage of college students who enroll full-time. Finally, although the trend exists, it probably will be imperceptible: In 1990, 583 of every 1,000 undergraduates enrolled full-time while in the year 589 of every 1,000 undergraduates enrolled are projected to be full-time -undergraduate students.

The most significant change in the composition of the first-year class of the year 2000 will be in the percentages of the entering class which come from underrepresented groups. Interestingly, projections from the typical sources are not available for the racial/ethnic composition of undergraduate enrollments for the year 2000. Thus, while racial/ethnic enrollment percentages for the years 1980 and 1990 which appear in Table 2 are actual figures, racial /ethnic enrollment projections for the year 2000 which appear in Table 2 are based on current (1992) college enrollment rates of 18-24 year-olds by racial/ethnic category applied to projected changes in the racial/ethnic population cohorts of 18-24 year-olds between 1990 and 2000. These data suggest that there will be an increase in the percentage of racial and ethnic minorities from 21% in 1990 to 27.2% in the year 2000, an increase of more than 6%. And, this change in composition will be even more pronounced if there is upward movement in the college matriculation rates for these students.

Expectations for the academic performance of the entering college class of the year 2000 abound. Amid calls for school reform, a series of lofty performance goals have been set for kindergarten through 12th grade education through the "Goals 2000" initiative which began with the Education Summit of Governors in 1989 (National Goals Panel, 1992). In order to assess America's progress toward these goals, one might examine the educational pipeline on academic performance through using scores and other performance indicators obtained from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Because NAEP assessments are administered at various grade levels, it is possible:, to compare NAEP results of the entering college classes of 1990 and 2000 when they were at certain grade or age levels in the educational pipeline. NAEP scores for the entering classes of 1990 and 2000 in the areas of reading, writing, mathematics, and science are depicted in Table 3. It should be noted that the scores which appear in Table 3 are based on a scale of 0-500 and that the scores which appear in that table provide only a capsule of the information which is available through the NAEP program. One of the more startling findings of the comprehensive picture of academic performance provided, by the NAEP is that when members of the class of 1990 were eight years old, 21% of the boys and 15% of the girls were one or more years below modal grade level, while for the class of 2000,28% of the boys and 22% of the girls were one or more years below modal grade level. For a more in-depth study of these performance variables, readers should consult the most recent edition of The Condition of Education (U.S. Department of Education, 1992).

Table 3

NAEP Scoresfor Classes of 1990 and 2000

Notes. From Digest of Educational Statistics, 1994. Washington, IDC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the National Center for Education Statistics.
aWhen respective classes were 9 years old.
bWhen respective classes were in fourth grade.

NAEP data indicate that educators can expect no appreciable gains in the reading skills of the entering class of the year 2000. Further comparisons of NAEP data for nine year-olds in both classes indicate (a) higher scores for females than for males, ( b) higher scores for white students than for either African-American or Hispanic students, (c) higher scores for students whose parents had completed at least some college, (d) higher scores for students who had attended private schools, (e) higher scores for students from advantaged urban areas, and (f) higher scores for students in the northeast and central sections of the U.S.

Whether the effect will be perceptible or not, comparisons of the writing scores between students entering college in 1990 and those entering in 2000 indicate a slight improvement in writing proficiency. Although demographic breakdowns for writing similar to those presented for reading are not available, there also appear to be slight gains in the percentage of students reporting writing activities in their English classes as well as slight gains in students' perceptions of the value of writing.

The slight increase in NAEP mathematics proficiency scores is fueled largely by increases in the percentages of nine-year-old students who perform at or above selected proficiency levels. Those proficiency levels and the percentage of , nine-year-olds at or above those levels are (a),.simple arithmetic facts from 97% (class entering., in 1990) to 99% (class entering in 2000), (b) beginning skills and understanding from 71% to 81%, and (c) numerical operations and beginning problem solving from 19% to 28%., Gains were reported across all racial/ethnic Classifications (White, Black, Hispanic), and although percentages at or above proficiency levels for an three groups are almost equal for simple arithmetic facts, the percentages for Black and Hispanic students achieving the more advanced proficiency categories continue to fall more than 20% below those of White students.

Science proficiency scores also slightly increased between nine-year-old students entering in 1990 and those entering in 2000. Although gains were achieved across all demographic groupings studied, further score comparisons show higher scores for (a) White students than for either Black or Hispanic students, (b) students whose parents had at least some college, (c) students, from private schools, and (d) students from , advantaged urban environments. The scores of boys have increased more than those of girls, from being equal for the class of 1990 to a seven point difference for the class entering in 2000.

At least from the perspective of this examination of NAEP scores, it appears that any change in academic performance of the entering class in the year 2000, although slightly improved overall, may not be obvious to post-secondary educators. Gains in the scores of students in the educational pipeline suggest that American education will fall short of several of its goals for the year 2000. As a result, there will be no influx of students with increasing academic abilities in the entering class of 2000, a fact that will require educators to support large numbers of students who will need additional academic intervention if they are to succeed in college.

If one were to draw conclusions regarding students entering college in 2000 based solely on demographic trends and academic performance indicators, one would think that, save noticeable increases in minority enrollments, the first-year class of 2000 would be very similar to those entering in 1990. Yet, it appears that nothing could be further from the truth. Students entering in 2000 are, in reality, on the cusp between the 13th generation and the Millennium Generation (Howe & Strauss, 1993). The social and political events that have profoundly influenced them, at least at the time this chapter is being written, are the Challenger explosion, the end of the cold war, the Persian Gulf War, AIDS, and the Rodney King incident (Levine, 1993). And, changes in schooling, the school environment, and in the home environment continue to shape their attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. However, because of space limitations this author has chosen to list selected indicators of the changes that are taking place in the schools, the school environment, and in the home environment.

The following trends in schooling are highlighted. Unless otherwise noted, the source of each of these statements is the Digest of Educational Statistics, 1994 (U.S. Department of Education, 1994).

• U.S. Department of Education estimates that 500,000 students are home schooled, while home-schooling advocates believe that number to be more than a million (Kuznik, 1994).
• It is projected that in the year 2000, more than a half million students will earn the GED.
• 17 states have implemented standards for issuing additional diplomas which are above the minimums required for high school graduation.
• 32 states have increased the number of Carnegie units required for high school graduation.
• 43% of high school students who intend to go to college do not take a comprehensive core of high school courses (American College Testing Program, 1994).
• The pupil/teacher ratio in public schools is on the rise.
• Per pupil expenditures in public schools have not increased (in real dollars) since 1989.
• 78% of parents of school-age children give the public schools a grade of C or below (Elam, Rose, & Gallup, 1994).

The following trends are highlighted for the school environment. Unless otherwise noted, the source for each of these statements is Digest of Educational Statistics, 1994 (U.S. Department of Education, 1994).

• The general public believes that fighting/ violence/gangs, lack of discipline, and drug abuse are major problems confronting public schools. (Elam, Rose, & Gallup, 1994)
• More than 100 languages are spoken by high school students in the nation's largest cities (Dunn, 1993).
• One-third of 12th grade students say that disruptions by other students interfere with their learning.
• Nearly 60% of 12th grade students feel that there is a lot of cheating on tests and assignments.
• 31% of 12th grade students indicate that some teachers ignore cheating when they see it.
• 16.3% of 12th grade students indicate that there are many gangs in school.
• There has been a significant decline in the percentage of seniors who report that they participate in athletics, cheerleading, hobby clubs, music, and vocational clubs.
• One in four seniors participates in an academic club.
• 39.2% of high school students report using computers at school.
• There have been decreases in the percentage of students reporting drug and alcohol use.
• Nearly one in four students reports having carried a knife to school.
• 3% of students report having carried a gun to school.
• Nearly 40% of college-bound, high school graduates rate the adequacy of high school education as average or below average (American College Testing Program, 1994).

Home Environment

• 17.1% of school-age children live below the poverty level (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1993).
• 14% of school-age children speak a language., other than English at home (Dunn, 1993).
• Single-parent families will increase by 16% between 1990 and 2000 when nearly 9 million households will be headed by single parents ("Future of Households," 1993).
• Blended families will increase between when 45.4% of all marriages were remarriages, and the year 2000 (DeWitt, 1993).
• Every day in America; 40 teenage girls give birth to their third child (Hodgkinson, 1985).
• Nearly 25% of the U.S. population have less than a high school diploma (Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac, 1994).
• In 1992, 5.5% of U.S. families consist of a father working and a mother at home with two children, down from 11% in 1980 (Dunn, 1993).
• 37.2% of high school students report having access to home computers (U.S. Department. of Education, 1994).

Although it is possible neither to capture all the trends in the school and home environments nor to project the impact those trends will have on the college student in the year 2000, it is clear that these trends will profoundly shape the opinions and attitudes of students who do choose to enroll. These trends will also have enormous implications for those engaged in academic advising, because they challenge some of our basic assumptions about students', home and school environments.

In addition to the areas of demographic characteristics, academic performance, and trends in the home and school environments, the topics of educational aspirations, self-assessment, and student expectations of the postseconndary environment must be discussed also. Although data from Dey et al. (1991) are particularly useful for looking at trends in these areas, and even though there are no assurances that trend lineswill continue until the year 2000, the direction of these trends may provide additional insights. While the major purposes for attending college cited in these studies continue to be attaining a better job and making more money, there is a notable inflation in both degree aspirations and in student estimates of their traits and abilities. In 1980, when students were asked to identify the highest degree they intended to earn, about 48% indicated a degree higher than a bachelor's degree. In 1990, more than 61% of the students indicated that they had degree aspirations above the bachelor's degree. And, when students were asked to compare themselves with average persons of the same age on a series of traits and abilities, first-year students in 1990 had higher opinions of themselves than did students entering in 1980. There were increases in the percentage of students who ranked themselves either above average or in the top 10% on academic ability, artistic ability, drive to achieve, leadership ability, mathematical ability, popularity, popularity with the opposite sex, intellectual self-confidence, social self-confidence, and writing ability. Sadly enough, the only trait for which these percentages decreased was in understanding of others. Should these trend lines continue, members of the class of 2000 will aspire to even higher educational goals and will exhibit even greater confidence in their ability to reach those goals.

Against this backdrop of higher aspirations and higher selfassessment of traits and abilities are the expectations of college which will characterize the entering class of 2000. Because the transition to college has never been smooth for many students, it can be stated with a high degree of certainty that the class of 2000 will be no more likely to understand the realities which will confront them in college than their predecessors. To support this assertion, it is possible to utilize the Dey et al. (1991) data to compare student expectations of college with what they actually experience. Table 4 contrasts student expectations reported by Dey et al. (1991) with actual experiences reported from a variety of sources including the most recent Student Opinion Survey Normative Report from the American College Testing Program (1992), based on 103,000 U. S. college students. Unless otherwise noted, the "Experiences" listed in Table 4 are reported from the Student Opinion Survey Normative Report.

Table 4

Percentages of Students Who Expect and Experience Specific Outcomes in College

Indeed, these differences between expectations and reported experiences indicate that college is a transitional shock for students. It is safe to assume that first-year students in the year 2000 will encounter similar, if not greater, dissonance between their expectations of college and their experiences in college.

One more trend must be noted. According to Witchel (1991), there has been a substantial increase in psychological disturbance among college students, and waiting lists for treatment in college counseling centers are a sign of the times. There are more students entering college today suffering from serious emotional distress, including self-destructive behavior, violence against others, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, as well as victimization because of date and acquaintance rape, courtship violence, family or spouse abuse, and family drug and alcohol abuse. Upcraft (1993) has noted that physical health problems are also on the increase, including eating disorders, sexually transmitted diseases, and, of course, AIDS. This means that academic advisors must be aware of signs of mental and physical health problems and be prepared to make appropriate referrals.

Because almost all social and cultural changes take place in small increments, they are not often observable over small units of time. Such could very easily be the conclusions drawn by postsecondary educators who view changes in the entering college class as infinitesimal from year to year. Yet, when viewed from a broader perspective and time frame, there are likely to be some stunning differences between the students who entered college in 1990 and those who will enter college in the year 2000. Changes in age, gender, attendance status, and academic preparation will probably go unnoticed, while changes in racial/ethnic composition, at least for many colleges, will be very apparent. Changes in the areas of the school and family environments, and in student aspirations and self-concepts will, however, have a significant impact on the way in which students think about, respond to, and value the college experience. Simply stated, the diversity of student backgrounds will render the term "typical student" obsolete as a defining element for entering students of 2000. And, this diversity will most likely lead to greater transitional shock among first-year students, which, in turn, creates an imperative to improve programs and services for them.

The challenges of this imperative will require advisors of the first-year class in the year 2000 both to broaden their understanding of the backgrounds of their students and to develop those skills and abilities which will increase the likelihood of student success. The implications of these challenges are presented below:

Understanding Student Needs

1. Advisors must become aware of the demographic, academic performance, and cultural trends which shape the goals and aspirations of the students they serve. In reality, a national overview of these trends applies to, no single institution. Each of the trends will affect individual institutions differently. Geography, institutional mission, selectivity,,. multiculturalism, and academic performance combine with other factors to make, each institution's first-year class different from those of other institutions. Implicit in this notion, then, is that advisors understand the blend of characteristics of their entering students.
   
2. Advisors must demonstrate understanding of and sensitivity to the racial/ethnic background of their first-year students and take into account the influence of these students' experiences on their attitudes toward and approaches to College. Demonstration of understanding and sensitivity will, quite probably, result in the application of different advising techniques and approaches. Frost (1991) provides an excellent summary of the student characteristics and advising techniques that apply to ethnic minorities and to international students.
   
3. Advisors must demonstrate understanding of and sensitivity to the differential developmental needs of students with disabilities, student athletes, and students who are undecided and/or underprepared and take into account the way in which these circumstances influence their attitudes toward and approaches to college. Frost (1991) also describes important characteristics of and suggests techniques for improving the quality of advising provided for these students.
   
4. Advisors must demonstrate understanding of and sensitivity to the fact that the first year of college is a major life transition for all students. Although the intensity of the transition varies from one student to another, the academic and social environment of college is different from the academic and social environments from which students have come.

In addition to gaining broader insights on the nature of students to be served, it is equally critical that if members of the entering class in 2000 are to be successful, then an expanded array of advisor skills and abilities must be exhibited. The advisor role should focus on the following attributes:

1. An advisor must be a mediator. In this role, the advisor serves as an individual who assists the student in mediating the difference between student expectations and student experiences. Quality advice rests on the ability of the advisor to assist the student in identifying the differences, exploring the reasons for the differences, constructing a plan of action for dealing with the differences, and monitoring the plan of action.
   
2. An advisor must be an orchestrator, a blender of student and institutional resources. Students bring with them a wealth of increasingly diverse resources and background experiences. The institution provides its own resources of faculty, programs, facilities, curriculum, and support services. It is knowledge of both student and institutional resources which places the advisor in the orchestrator role, focusing on the full utflization of institutional resources to help achieve student success.
   
3. An advisor must be an intervener. An intervener is an individual who actively inserts herself into a process. The role includes not only monitoring student progress, but also actively interceding when academic progress is not what it should be. Although the role of intervener is one which has been widely promoted in the field of advising (a.k.a. intrusive advising), it must be reaffirmed if students are to succeed.
   
4. An advisor must be an advocate for constructive change. Because academic advising is the only structured activity on campus through which all students have the opportunity for ongoing, one-to-one interaction with a concerned representative of the institution (Habley, 1981), advisors know how policies, programs, procedures, and personnel affect students. However, in many cases, advisors do not (are not encouraged to) share with decision-makers the information which would lead to program, personnel, or policy modifications. This is particularly important in the case of the increasing diversity of entering students, because academic advisors may be the first to recognize how this diversity may influence programs, personnel, and policies. The failure to advocate effectively for constructive change, will poorly serve the diverse needs of the entering class in the year 2000.

In conclusion, the challenges faced by advisors of the class of 2000 are formidable, but they are not insurmountable. The challenges will be met, and will be met well, if advisors focus both on gaining a greater understanding of the students they serve and on expanding their roles as mediators, orchestrators, interveners, and advocates for constructive change.

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Dunn, W. (1993). Educating diversity. American Demographics, 15(4), 38-43.

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Upcraft, M. L. (1993). Orienting today's students. In M. L. Upcraft, R. H. Mullendore, B. 0. Barefoot, & D. S. Fidler (Eds.), Designing successful transitions: A guide for orienting students to college (pp. 1-8). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, National Resource Center for The Freshman Year Experience.

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