I'm glad someone pointed that out. I just started laughing when I read that headline. Did the author never take a basic statistics course?

(Just to be pedantic, though, I will mention that it's not true "by definition". If the distribution in question is skewed, it will not be the case that half are above average. Average these numbers: 100000 2 4 6 1. Only 20% of those values are above average.)

Actually, psychologists have found that, on almost any subject, most people think they are above average. It's fairly well known that a hilariously high percentage of drivers -- of all ages -- think they are "above average".

LOL. Beat me to it. :) One of the sillier headlines I've seen.

Yep, that silly headline was what caused me to read this story in the first place. Junicon is correct if you use the most common meaning of "average" (arithmetic mean), but I find it more amusing to imagine that we're talking about the median, which may be the definition of "average" to which Georgia turning blue was referring.

(...speaking of being pedantic.)

It must have been a survey where you had 3 (or maybe more choices). If you had to choose between below average, average, and above average you don't expect 50% to pick above average.

Actually, half are above the median. For a quantitative value like grades, you can have more or fewer than 50% of the students above the average (or mean). My guess is that, with grade inflation more than half of students get a grade above the average. For example, if you had a class of 20, and 19 students got As and one got an F, only that one student would be below the average. Everyone else would be above it.

I guess the answer is to give them grades, and then they will know for sure if they are above average. Oh wait, they do that. What is the point of this article again? The younger generations do have what i would like to call dangerously entitled attitudes, but this article is just strange. What has journalism come to these days, there are trying to correlate two unrelated topics as if they have anything to do with each other.

Thinking you are above average is not called entitlement, it is called egotistical. This journalist could have paid more attention in school. Maybe this journalist was too busy thinking they were above average, and is clearly and obviously mistaken.

It is also relative to the pool. If you are comparing those admitted to college with each other, that's different from comparing them to the general population. Since many people don't graduate high school and go to college, compared to the general population more than half of college admitees are above average (academically), just as all college football players are above average (in football ability).

I don't know about others, but when I was 18, in comparison to the general population, I was a freakin genius (using the term lightly). (But then again, pretty much any student who made decent grades in high school and qualified for a full scholarship based on academics would qualify as such.)

I'm a senior citizen and I am absolutely positive that I am more intelligent than 90 % of you ;-p

If you consider that maybe only half of kids college freshmen age attend college, the likelihod that half of them are above average in things like intelligence is pretty darn high.

BTW, virtually all of them have been academically tested to death so by the time they reach college they have a pretty good idea where they sit academics wise with their peers. Just saying...

TruthHurtsAtTimes ... I don't think it is necessarily egotistical to think you are "above average" ... maybe you are, maybe you aren't ! - so it could be realism or delusion.

Of course, I'd really like the title of the article to be "Half of college freshman feel 'above median'" just to rub in the silliness of the whole thing.

The next generation is crumbling the future. But it probably doesn't matter because the Rapture is going to happen in November. Unless you believe the Mayan prediction. Then the world will end in 2012. Either way...

I wish they they were half as smart and capable as they think they are.

This is what the self esteem movement has wrought.

Yep, the statistics work! How they feel about their abilities vs. their actual abilities is fodder for another study. I need to learn how to write research grant proposals.

I'd also be interested in what the students' parents think of them. I really wouldn't be surprised if baby boomers each think that their child is amazing while also thinking that everyone else's child has a over-inflated sense of self-worth. The kids are getting this from somewhere.

Yes, but they are significantly above average compared to the general population, so maybe the trend shows that the freshmen are more self-aware than in previous generations?

Working at a fairly prestigious university (not Ivy league, but well known), what frightens me is not their concept of themselves now, but were they envision themselves years from now. Almost universally, they see themselves at the CEOs and leaders in their fields. When you try to tell them, they can't ALL be the top - they get this glazed over look. My concern is for how this generation will deal with the reality that they will not all achieve their goals. There will be an entire generation that will be dissappointed.

Half believe they are above average, and the other half believe they are WAY above average!

Well, all of the children in Lake Wobegon are above average.

Semantics aside, I think we all know what the article is saying. Younger people, within the scope of their own minds, think they are better than others (arrogance) for no reason except 'Well, I am from the special generation; therefore, I am entitled.' It's like, mentally, they never left preschool and the child safety seat of their parents' vehicle.

It isn't just younger people, it's a well known phenomenon in social psychology. Not to be confused with (no offense intended) something ridiculous like morbidly obese people thinking they are thinner than average... the average person in many regards considers themselves above average, meaning in a sample pool sufficiently sized to contain all points of a given spectrum, statistically significantly more than half place themselves above average. This is well known in social psychology, and covers all ages and much more than self perception of academic prowess. The assumption that it says anything about young people is premature. Of course, it isn't a posters fault, because they don't really know how common this type of study is, nor how common the same findings are.

There's also a related phenomenon that goes by different names depending on the study, but I rather like the "genius effect". Not only do people tend to see themselves as above average... when obviously outperformed, on average they tend to attribute this to be because the other person is a genius/expert/master/whatever. Couldn't possibly be because they are... well... average :)

That's simply not true, though. Most young adults today work longer hours than their parents or grandparents did.

@Georgia turning blue: You beat me to it! I cracked up when I read the headline.

Totally disagree. Getting them to come into work ON time and stay focus is a chore. they can't think on their own and do assignments on their own. And stay til it's done? God forbid. 5pm they're out, regardless of whether a project is done or not. And then they don't understand when their a$$ gets chewed out.

Please!

JKLD, it sounds like your job involves supervising some of the young people we are talking about. Depending on what your profession is, perhaps the young people you are dealing with are not representative of the population as a whole.

I don't doubt that there are many lazy young people out there. It's just that I'm not convinced that the young people today are any more lazy than past generations. In 1970, the middle aged folks routinely blasted the "lazy hippies" and wondered what this world was coming to. That complaint is as old as humanity, I think.

My comment was based on studies I've read that measured the average amount of hours people work today vs past generations. All of the ones I've read report that people today (of all ages) work longer hours than our parents and grandparents did at the same age. Of course, that's an average -- if your sample of young people is not representative for some reason, you might have a completely different experience than that.

As a member of the "Who the hell do you think you are?" generation, I have to say I could have used more of the praise and encouragement that created the self-esteem of the young people in this study.

As I see it, the issue is about giving kids a realistic view of themselves. Stop giving everyone trophies just for showing up; but teach them to feel good about themselves when they actually earn it - whether through achievement, character or sincere effort.

And a word to the Boomer Bashers: I used to think the America's woes were the fault of the repressed, martini drinking, conformist generation of the 1950s. Now I see them for hard working, self-sacrificing, Great Depression and World War II survivors that they were. When you get a bit older and outgrow the tendency to blame your parents for everything wrong with your life - and the world - you'll see that every generation has its pluses and minuses.

Boomers gave you the peace, civil rights and gay rights movements; a chance for the majority of women to enter the workplace in roles other than secretary, teacher or nurse; raised ecological awareness; and established your freedom to express your individuality without social ostracism.

I couldn't agree more. The everybody gets a trophy period we're living in now has created some serious problems. I don't like seeing a kid cry anymore than the next person but it teaches you to work harder next time. The message parents, teachers and coaches send now is "the world is a fair place where everyone's a winner," and that's just not true. I want my kids to be confident but I won't cripple them by giving them a false sense of how the world works. Life's not fair and the sooner they learn that the better prepared they will be for adult life. They need to know their strengths as well as their weaknessees.

If half of college students think they are "above average", there is nothing unrealistic about that. Unless the distribution in question is highly skewed (which is not the case here), about half of them *ARE* above average.

So then, did half of the doctors practicing today graduate in the lower half of their class?

If so, I've seen mostly doctors in that category. They charge about the same as the smart and dedicated doctors. Sad, but true.

Sarah, you are exactly right. The whole self esteem push for kids has gone totally overboard. While I agree that self esteem is a good thing for kids, when it goes so totally off the deep end and schools are told that competition is bad and everyone has to win it creates self esteem based on lies. (I taught pre-school and kindergarten and was told certain children's games were too competetive because some kids lose)

The world is a competetive place. Your entire life you are competing, what schools you go to, what job you get, we even compete for a mate. Most people probably lose more than they win in life as a whole. Losing is a learning experience.

The earlier kids learn to compete, learn that they have to strive for things and that they are not just handed to them, the better off they will be, the more capable they will be in dealing with loss and figuring out how to achieve their goals.

When kids are given everything, why would they work hard to be the best? That is the major contributing factor, as I see it, to the students of the United States falling further and further behind the rest of the world academically.

The world is a competetive place and not everyone wins and one needs to work hard for what they want. Participation trophies and social promotion o nothing to prepare kids for the real world.

I think another issue that contributes to this feeling of entitlement is the lack of the basics, respect, discipline, knowing right from wrong. What I see is the attitude--I am here therefore I deserve everything.

I remember a book called "All I need to know I learned in kindergarten" and I believe those things are still true.

All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

- by Robert Fulghum

Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day.

Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup - they all die. So do we.

And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK . Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and sane living.

Yes, I know that I am generalizing and not all kids today are like this, however I honestly believe that the ones that are not like this are the exception rather than the rule, which is unfortunate for our country.

Best way to solve any ego problem, before they arise, is with regular scheduled beatings :-)

I though it was the 24th, when is it really?

Maybe it's your unnecessary use of the (coded) F-Bomb that makes us believe you are a narcissistic bum.

Is it really necessary to call "bomb" every instance of the "f-word"?

Do we really need to call "bomb" every instance of the "f-word"?

Blo-1987 is right: We all have something unique to offer the world based on our own unique strengths/perspectives/experiences/etc., and there is absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging this. Those who wanna "Boo" at others along the way need to cheer up about life and grow into their own sense of purpose.

We are all f@*king special!

Yes, we do all have something unique...but the "you're special" has to be balanced with other life lessons and it hasn't been.

Bio, this is more of a social experiment. Some of us were raised by the "Dr. Spock" book and that didn't work out so well. Many well meaning parents tried to give their children a boost up by thinking they were helping a kid's self esteem. It is hypocritical once a parent does this, society tends to think you're generation is too full of themselves. Depends on the individual, though. Some do end up doing so, others dont. There are narcissistic people in all generations. Only with the social movements and self awareness in the 60s with est and such being in its infancy....we are still learning. And you too, when you have children will try to do the best only to find it might back fire. That's life, live and learn.

Thank you for that Indigogoal! I guess the answer is we're all still learning life's lessons. Sorry about the "coded f-bomb." I just got a little passionate there, but I think the point got across.

Blo.... Why is it that so many college freshmen need remedial courses and have a distinct inability to string together 2 logical coherent thoughts?

Tom, please show me your scientific evidence to support your claim. Until then, please don't bring your baseless subjective observations. The fact is, if you are correct, then it is the failure of the education put in place by the generation prior to us that is causing remedial courses to be necessary. You reap what you sow.

And, as a hard working, taxpaying citizen with my own small business, please, no longer refer to me as "narcissistic, or a bum," nukeman. Also, how do you correlate, what YOU feel is an "unnecessary use of the f bomb" to me being narcissistic, or a bum. Really no logic there as "the f bomb" is prevalent in society and taught to me by the adults that I have come across in my life.

Tell em Bio, You are only as good or bad as the people you learn from, and surround your self with.

It isn't just that people consider themselves above average students, it's almost anything. Looks, intelligence, just about anything I am familiar with undergoing the same experimental premise follows the same pattern of skewed averages... statistically significantly more than half of participants report perceiving themselves as above average.

Of course, I'm not a social psych guru, so I may just have not read in what areas the skewed average doesn't exist. I'd also suspect it has more to do with an individualist vs. collectivist society, but that's just what I'd guess before looking up similar studies conducted in collectivist societies. I can assure you, however, that in America it's WAY more than just academics where the same skewed average principle applies.

The point where this becomes a problem is often where it isn't balanced with empathy. Self esteem is great... but only to a point, many would be shocked to learn. For example, many (if not most, but I'm not really sure if it's been qualified as most... so let's say many :P ) have a perception of murderers/serial murderers as having low self esteem stemming from violent childhoods. Some do... but as it turns out, most have ultra HIGH self esteem. The results are... well... not good without empathy in high supply as well. This is where narcissism and sociopathy come into the picture.

Tom:

Part of the issue with colleges these days, is that the belief that anyone can be brought up to collegiate level has brought colleges down to everyone's level. A total relaxation of standards.

Actually, you just defined median rather than average. It's a lot easier to ride the high horse if you do your research before you hop on.

Nice job Grammitik. Brian must be an above average Liberal Arts major.

nukeman,

There is no such thing as a liberal arts major! There is ( or was) a liberal arts education which emphasized language, history, math, logic etc before taking on the rigorous courses in a major field! I dont have a lot of respect for many of today's college graduates!

Guess what? They don't give you trophies for coming last in the real world. ;0). That being said, this is a silly article and I wonder how much of our money was spent doing this ridiculous survey? Statistically speaking half the college freshmen ARE at or above average. The question is; Does the correct half believe they are the ones that are above average?

Stanford (I think it was Stanford) did a test and discovered that smarter people do not think they are that smart, and less intelligent people think they are smarter than they really are. They gave a group of people a test and asked them how they think they did. The smarter people graded themselves lower than their actual score and vice versa for the less intelligent people, some of them actually arguing over the answers.

And as for the older generation, of which I am a member of being that I am 52 - saying that the younger generation is terrible. Ummm,, sorry, our generation is the one that has developed the housing bubble and the $14 Trillion deficit. I kind of think our hippie generation screwed up and I hope the younger generation is smarter than we were.

Tom... there very much IS a such thing as a liberal arts major. For some, it is a stepping stone to grad school, but (as far as I have noticed) most who are Liberal Arts Majors are on a teaching path. You get a BA in Liberal Arts, apply for the teacher education program, and take the latter courses concurrent with the former. In most cases, you also take an "emphasis" (which is so minor that it makes no difference virtually what class you actually teach to school children) which is something like 4 extra courses in science, or math, or whatever beyond the Liberal Arts major requirement. Your actual BA is still Liberal Arts. Why someone would want to go that route other than being a teacher (or a planned career that needs ANY old BA/BS... plenty out there judging by classifieds over the years) or on occasion just to get a little bit of everything prior to grad/later type schooling, I really couldn't tell you. But, it most certainly exists.

MusicGirl, I'm just not seeing it. I see new hires with brand spanking new degrees who can't put 3 words together to make a sentence and demand the top end salary.

I'm a non-traditional college student starting my junior year. I graduated from high school 24 years ago. My classmates, who are your age, don't know the simplest things. I've seriously been amused by the fact that they can't cook for themselves, don't know the difference between cooking and heating, can't wash their own clothes, can't use a can opener, can't fill out a college application without their parents right there with them, and are really clueless in class. You may think you worked harder than we did, but from where I'm sitting in my classes with your peers, you learned nothing at home or in school.

And yes, entitlement was the wrong word to use. Having been working on a college campus for the last year writing parking tickets, I can assure you without wasting money on an official study that college students do have entitlement issues as well as huge egos. I've never seen so many people who think that the rules don't apply to them. With that said, I've also seen the parents encouraging this, parents who are faculty members of the university I attend. Like the one who allowed her daughter to park in handicapped without a handicapped tag so they could talk in her car. Or the one who lets her daughter use her faculty hang tag so she can park in faculty and hides the decal on the back of the car so she won't get ticketed. These people are teaching! I'm kind of scared of what the world will be like in the near future when these people graduate from college.

MusicGirl, I was a teaching assistant for five years at a private university. Students not only think they deserve grades they clearly don't, but raise issues with the dean/provost to complain when they get the "C" they deserve instead of the "A" they want. Unfortunately, it frequently works, because the word "lawsuit" is much scarier than giving an inflated grade to a clearly inferior student. Enough is enough.

ToriLynne: You aren't really being quite fair, you've made far too many generalizations especially with regard to thinking your generation clearly worked harder than the current one. Maybe some of you worked harder than some of us, but not all of you, and not all of us. If I can recall, most of my parents generation actually enjoyed summer vacations during high school. Starting at the age of 15, I worked full time during the summer to save money for college, doing manual labor. The summer of my senior year, when supposedly everyone gets to party and enjoy themselves, I picked up a second job that was part time to try to close the gap between what college would cost, and what I could afford to pay. But I guess no matter what I did, all of your generation worked longer hours in worse jobs, right?

The question is a matter of self perception, so the questioning is necessary to not quantify what is average. It's self inventory. If you told a person with 100 IQ and knew it that 105 was average... it'd be a math test, not a self perception test.

no, the difference is we won't get the money after paying into it our own lives. social security is not solvent, because congress borrowed from it. who runs congress? generation x and y? or the baby boomers? don't try to pass this off on the government - YOUR GENERATION IS THE GOVERNMENT. it happened on your watch. so thanks for leaving us all high and dry - if I refuse to pay my social security taxes, that's illegal, yet people my age are GUARANTEED to not be able to collect what we should from social security 20-30 years down the road when we need it. and that's thanks to the baby boomers.

It's a PONZI SCHEME! The worst part about it is that someone like myself (stuck between the boomers and gen-x) is going to get royally screwed! I've been working since I was 15, that's 30 years in the work force, and I'm being told that I will receive NOTHING. I want my damn money back, or let Bernie Madoff out of jail, it's all the same!

Folks...... just let me say this. Both SS and Medicare will be solvent for sometime yet and do NOT contribute the deficit OR debt.What has been driving this debt sicne reagan is tax cuts and overspending, paritulcarly as it relates to the Defense Department and goodies for large corporations! Another fact is that this debt crisis is a deliberate creation of the GOP ("starve the beast") so they could tell Americans "hey, we're broke" and privatize the entitlement programs. US treasury record show that the last 3 GOP presidents signed TWENTY deficit riddled budgets that conributed over $11T to the national debt. MOST of those budgets were passed using "reconciliation" which you all know cant be filibustered!

If they had NOT done that and run RECORD deficits, we would NOT be having this conversation about entitlements! WE also would NOT have a debt crisis and this country's finances, including SS, Medicare etc, would be just fine! It seems deficit DO matter and we ALL know who ran them up!

PS... From what I can see, todays college freshmen are nowhere NEAR as prepared for rigorous college education as those of 20-30 years ago. There are SO MANY remedial classes in colleges' first year that they've almost become glorified high schools! But, Im a boomer so I must be prejudiced!

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/2010/B80.xls

Care to review this spreadsheet from the GPO and revise your assertion. If you can, with a straight face, say that "human resource" spending isn't what is driving our fiscal collapse, then all I can say is you are delusional.

Simply compare the literal explosion of spending in columns K through O, from 1943 to the present. And we have only scratched the surface. Human Resource spending is scheduled to increase exponentially from here, that unless everyone over 55 does the honorable thing and keels over right now.

We are simply screwed three ways to Sunday and it centers around collective solutions to individual problems. And EXACTLY what those who were against socialization said would happen has happened - intergenerational war of words that will soon make Greece look like a picnic.

After you have digested the spreadsheet, I'd recommend you search for the Financial Report of the United States Government, particularly from about 2003-2007 when David Walker was the Comptroller General. It may just open up your eyes and you can stop with the bible and verse of staying the course on entitlements. There is a huge problem and the fix isn't simply "tax the rich". If you don't see the problem as so far beyond that, then you are not part of a solution, you are part of the partisan-based problem. Our fiscal health is beyond partisan politics now. Search for Walker out on the internet and youtube. He's as non-partisan as they came, that is until he resigned in 2008 as no one would listen to him. Now we're just simply tossing a cool TRILLION onto our National Debt. But for SO MANY on the left and right, it's business as usual with the same shopworn non-sense that led us into this fiscal mess in the first place.

I have been able to

I taught 12 to 15 year-old kids for 5 years. The huge gap between "self-esteem" education and REAL self-esteem is in DOING SOMETHING. Kids don't do things--they get home from school and neither parent is home, they're forbidden from playing independently because of the Stranger-Danger scare and the necessity of "play dates" (wtf?--yes, a 36 yr-old can say wtf!), so they sit down in front of a TV or a video game station to have something to interact with. This is not a self-esteem building event, and by the time I saw these kids, they were already segregated by their home environment. They could read well--or not. Could perform basic math--or not. Understand basic scientific concepts--or not, because there was no emphasis on anything but rote memorization in science classes prior to 7th Grade.

Kids who had parents who were sane, involved, and not stressed beyond the breaking point were doing very well--"Above average." Many of the other kids were pulling okay grades, but yes, there is major grade-inflation. As a teacher, I can tell you, my students were tested with such STUPID tests, I was stuck with such a moronic curriculum and then handicapped in my ability to teach any of it, that at the end of the year I could look back and see very little of relevance in their experience. I cared. I tried. I was hamstrung.

You can really tell the difference between kids who have had to struggle and those who have not. The kids who've had to struggle--either with disability, discrimination, poverty, or to meet the challenges set by their invested parents--have the strength to hit the job market running. Those whose only struggle has been to find out how to get mom and dad to let them sit on the computer for a few more hours ... they know they're great because they can out-iPhone me, but in a pitched battle, I can crush that iPhone in 15 seconds flat and move along to something that requires education across a broad spectrum of experiences.

The great kids of the current generation are REALLY great. The not-so-great kids are scary. There's a real dichotomous spread, and I think it has much to do with the same corporate-Repub-elitist destruction that's affecting everything else. Some kids' parents have to work all the time to pay the bills and have no time left for their kids. Others have the resources to raise their kids well, but they're becoming rare as more and more people are being squeezed out of the middle "class." Don't blame the kids--or even the parents. It really does come back to manipulation masterminded by the rich elitists.

I think what they are getting at in a sort of obtuse way is that parents are so desperate for their kids to be the best they can be that they end up lowering the bar so that their perfectly acceptable average kid looks like a freaking super-hero. When that kid grows up and gets to his first job, he's very likely to think he's a lot better, smarter, faster, etc. than everyone else - because he's been told all his life that he's above average.

Don't think anyone, including myself, is saying that we should start telling everybody that they suck or even people who are below average in one respect or another that they just aren't cutting the mustard. There just seems to be an "attitude" among the generation now entering the workforce that they are perfect just the way they are and there's really no room for improvement.

I think she's trying to say that kids should be encouraged to be the best they can be, but have a realistic sense of where they actually end up afterwards. Sometimes your best only gets you halfway up the mountain. It's not right to make them think that they're just as good as the ones who got all the way, just because the effort spent was the same.