Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Back-to-College Spending Falters as Freshmen Cut Back

In a dramatic shift, back-to-college spending isn't expected to rise this year because of a sharp drop in spending by freshmen and their parents.

First-year college students will spend 19% less on back-to-college shopping, according to National Retail Federation survey data. The decline is a setback for struggling retailers, who are trying to boost sales during their second-biggest season after the winter holidays.

"Freshmen have always been the cash cow for retailers when it comes to the back-to-college season," NRF spokeswoman Ellen Davis says.

The projected downturn in spending is "an eyebrow-raiser," though slight shifts in spending in other grade levels should make up for the loss.

Overall back-to-college spending should be flat, with shoppers expected to spend $616.13 on average in 2010, down from an average of $618.12 spent last year.

Driving the decline in freshman spending is an expected cutback in the purchase of electronics.

On average, freshmen plan to slash their spending on laptops, MP3 players and other gadgets by more than $150 this year, the NRF says.

The Consumer Electronics Association predicts electronics sales will be up 3% from 2009, far better than last year but well below 2007 and 2008.

The NPD Group's Marshal Cohen attributes the decline in electronics sales to more students living at home and enrolling in local colleges.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2010-08-13-backtocollege13_ST_N.htm

Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation.

The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.

Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.
For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”

4. Al Gore has always been animated.

5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.

6. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.

9. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.

To view the entire list of 75 items, click the source link below.

Source: Beloit College
http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2014.php

Most Popular College Majors

The most popular college major for both women and men, according to the U.S. Department of Education's latest figures...

Women
 1. Business
 2. Health Professions and Related Clinical Sciences
 3. Social Sciences and History
 4. Education
 5. Psychology
 6. Visual and Performing Arts
 7. Communication and Communication Technologies
 8. Biological and Biomedical Sciences
 9. English Language and Literature/Letters
10. Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies, Humanities

Men
 1. Business
 2. Social Sciences and History
 3. Engineering and Engineering Technologies
 4. Visual and Performing Arts
 5. Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services
 6. Biological and Biomedical Sciences
 7. Communication and Communication Technologies
 8. Education
 9. Psychology
10. Security and Protective Services

Source: Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/10/most-popular-college-degrees-for-women-forbes-woman-leadership-education-business.html

Spice It Up

The Old Spice campaign has certainly garnered a lot of attention. It's likely you've probably seen at least one of these ads on TV, YouTube or Facebook. But did the campaign work? Yes!

The four main Mustafa commercials that have run since February have been watched more than 30 million times on YouTube. Old Spice now has more than 90,000 Twitter followers and more than 675,000 Facebook fans, with fan interaction climbing 800 percent, according to P&G, in the week following the real-time push.

"It's a record-breaking campaign for social media," says Matt Cutler, CMO of Visible Measures, which estimates total brand Web views to have exceeded 110 million. "It's by far the largest we've seen. It's not just approaching but surpassing the reach of traditional broadcast."

Moorhead says the campaign has received more than 1 billion media impressions. But has all the talk and online traffic translated to sales?

According to Nielsen data provided by Old Spice, overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months; up 27 percent in the last six months; up 55 percent in the last three months; and in the last month, with two new TV spots and the online response videos, up a whopping 107 percent.

Source: Adweek
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i3639278d2189e4efd2b8ab7d46542e93?pn=2

Teen Swaps Old Cell Phone for Porsche

A California teenager demonstrates that in today's culture, persistence can be more valuable than money...

Seventeen-year-old Steven Ortiz is fairly sure he is the only student at Charter Oak High School who drives a convertible Porsche to school.

And, to the surprise of some of his friends, it doesn't belong to his parents.

Steven started with an old cell phone and eventually traded up to his impressive ride.

It didn't happen overnight, but with the help of the Craigslist website and a lot of patience, Steven made 14 online swaps over two years to get his 2000 Porsche Boxster S.

Steven is part of a growing number of people who use the barter section of Craigslist to unload unwanted items and acquire desired goods, rather than just buying and selling them.

But he does more than just make a casual posting to swap concert tickets or an old bike. He spends five to six hours a day on his i-Phone scouring the website for good deals.

The teen said most of the people he trades with aren't after something for nothing.

They are simply looking to get rid of an item they don't need in exchange for something they do. And they often can get a better deal than if they sold the item for cash.

Source: San Gabriel Valley Tribune
http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_15533701

Three Predictions About Generation Z

In 2010, Gen X, the group defined as having graduated high school around the turn of the millennium, might as well be considered over the hill. Likewise, Gen Yers are slowly growing up and out of their "teen" phase, paving the way for tweens to take the crown. Increasingly, pre-teens of today are becoming more savvy and in tune with behaviors and preferences normally reserved for teens.

So what is this generation -- chronologically called by the name "Generation Z" -- going to look like? Here are three predictions:

1. Sorry, Kindle, Gen Zers are iPad enthusiasts.
The iPad has been the breakthrough device of the year. One could argue that the iPhone 4 or other mobile technologies should take that crown. But the iPad has created an entirely different way of receiving and absorbing information in 2010.

The iPad will outpace the iPhone for the chosen "keep the kids entertained device" for Gen Z parents as there is more room for security, limited need for a data plan, and the device will allow parents to hold onto their cell phones

2. They won't take criticism well.
If there's one thing we've learned from Generation Y, it's that they're not to be ... umm ... messed with. One slip of the tongue with a teenager and they're likely to stomp on your foot, leave the room, and start an empire quicker than you can say Facebook. The generation of entitlement is only going to continue to grow, so be prepared to speak to your young-ers the right way.

3. They will continue to find loopholes.
Generation Z will continue to find ways to access their information more quickly. Overall, a very interesting game of cat and mouse is about to ensue, and marketers will need to be even more on their toes in choosing the right strategy, creative, and media to engage this audience in something interactive.

Source: Engage:Teens - MediaPost
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=132445

Fewer Low-Income Students Going to College

Fewer low- and moderate-income high school graduates are attending college in America, and fewer are graduating.

Enrollment in four-year colleges was 40% in 2004 for low-income students, down from 54% in 1992, and 53% in 2004 for moderate-income students, down from 59% over the same period, according to  a report recently submitted to Congress by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.

If that trend has continued, low- and moderate-income students who don’t move on to college face an even darker outlook. The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year olds averaged 17% in 2004, the jobless rate for people over age 25 with just a high school diploma averaged 5% the same year. So far this year, those figures have jumped to 25.8% and 10.6%, respectively.

College expenses and financial aid have become increasingly larger considerations for parents and students, driving more qualified students away from enrolling in four-year colleges.

Persistence through four-year colleges dropped to 75% in students entering in 2003 for low-income students, down from 78% in students entering in 1995, while persistence for students from moderate-income families remained at 81%. Persistence rates for low- and moderate-income students in two-year colleges, however, fell 10 percentage points to 49% over the same period.

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/07/07/fewer-low-income-students-going-to-college/

American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation

An interesting read the other day in the New York Times, "American Dream is Elusive for New Generation"... The gist of the article is that finding a job or career of choice is difficult for recently college graduated Millennials - which puts a damper on their pursuit of the American Dream.

The article chronicles the experience of a 24-year-old recent college graduate, who turned down a job with a $40K annual salary because, the article notes, "Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder."

The article leaves me with lingering questions: Is pursuit of the American Dream too small as the driving force of one's life purpose? Is this young man's journey representative of his generation or does it just reflect one segment of Millennials (and perhaps a minority segment, at that)? Have his parents and grandparents behaviors equipped him with a skewed sense of entitlement (his parents are paying $2,000 a month for his apartment rent, and his grandparents paid for his college)? Are the notions of personal responsibility and character building no longer meaningful today?

I'm not sure there are clear-cut answers, but the article does provide some food for thought...

After breakfast, his parents left for their jobs, and Scott Nicholson, alone in the house in this comfortable suburb west of Boston, went to his laptop in the living room. He had placed it on a small table that his mother had used for a vase of flowers until her unemployed son found himself reluctantly stuck at home.

The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.

Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder.

“The conversation I’m going to have with my parents now that I’ve turned down this job is more of a concern to me than turning down the job,” he said.

Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/business/economy/07generation.html

Report: College Back-to-School Spending Up 13%

This year, college students will shell out approximately $306 billion in back-to-school spending, per a new report by Alloy Media + Marketing.

Come this fall, 16 million college students—a 6 percent increase—will hit the classrooms. Their combined 2010 spending power is up 13 percent, compared to last year. The spike is attributed to “an increase in per capita spending per student,” said Tammy Nelson, marketing and research vp at Alloy.

It's not just spending on mandatory, back-to-school purchases (books, room, board and tuition) that are going up. Alloy’s survey found that males and females ages 18 to 34 are also spending 10 percent more on discretionary items like gaming, technology and beauty products. Overall, college students are spending three percent more per month on discretionary purchases compared to last year, or $361 per person.  Alloy expects discretionary spending to hit $69 billion this year, a stark contrast to when retailers focused on price and value during last year’s back-to-school season.

At a time when the general population is still cutting back, much of the spending increase among college students is due to the fact that they hold a generally optimistic view of the nation’s economic recovery.

Source: Brandweek
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3ifb9f290da772a7b45d6fb416e579e877

Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer

Interesting read in the New York Times from earlier this month addresses the growing trend of many people in their 20s and early 30s not yet reaching traditional adult independence...

Baby boomers have long been considered the generation that did not want to grow up, perpetual adolescents even as they become eligible for Social Security. Now, a growing body of research shows that the real Peter Pans are not the boomers, but the generations that have followed. For many, by choice or circumstance, independence no longer begins at 21.

From the Obama administration’s new rule that allows children up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance to the large increase in the number of women older than 35 who have become first-time mothers, social scientists say young adulthood has undergone a profound shift.

People between 20 and 34 are taking longer to finish their educations, establish themselves in careers, marry, have children and become financially independent, said Frank F. Furstenberg, who leads the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, a team of scholars who have been studying this transformation.

“A new period of life is emerging in which young people are no longer adolescents but not yet adults,” Mr. Furstenberg said.

National surveys reveal that an overwhelming majority of Americans, including younger adults, agree that between 20 and 22, people should be finished with school, working and living on their own. But in practice many people in their 20s and early 30s have not yet reached these traditional milestones.

Marriage and parenthood — once seen as prerequisites for adulthood — are now viewed more as lifestyle choices, according to a new report released by Princeton University and the Brookings Institution.

Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/us/13generations.html