ISSUES IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION

Vol. 23, No. 3

August 2008
pp. 369371

The Millennial Lie

Timothy J. Fogarty

he recently departed Kurt Vonnegut coined the word foma, which he defined as
the harmless untruths that help us get through our lives. In Cats Cradle, he advises
that we should live by the foma that allow us to be brave and happy. In this essay,
I question one such foma and suggest that it is neither harmless nor useful.
Examining the contents of the summer edition of the Accounting Education News verifies the conclusion that readers find it difficult to avoid the heralding of the rising generation, aptly named the Millennials. The differences between those born after 1982 and
those who were born earlier, particularly the so-called Baby Boomers (post WWII1962
birthdates) have been well profiled in considerable detail (see for example, Howe and
Strauss 2000). The generational category is upon educators with increased ferocity, since
Millennials now make up the entirety of our traditional undergraduate student population.
Thus, for the professoriate, the new tide of a previously unrecognized cohort purports to
serve as news we can use.
I do not intend to take down the easy game. Anyone could easily challenge the journalistic tendency to create catchy names and to proceed to over-hype them. Sincerely, an
essay that challenged the generational construct on empirical grounds would not be worth
much. Paraphrasing the classic banter between Fitzgerald and Hemingway, I will concede
that the young are different from us. For the sake of argument, I can also stipulate that the
salient characteristics of these variations have been accurately captured by the growing
numbers of social commentators in our midst.
What remains for us is the normative imperative for educators. We should problemalize
the idea that the generationally induced attributes of our students are powerful and immutable and serves as the cause that compels us to change our teaching methods. In many
ways, the answer to what we should do hinges upon the role that we wish to undertake.
Are we to be facilitators of a force that cannot be opposed? Or should we attempt to
correct excessively unidimensional socialization, and make wayward youth conform
to the structures of the so-called real world.
At the risk of adding to the deluge, let me run through the central attributes of this age
cohort. There seems to be little disagreement in the literature, or more accurately, the
reportage, that this group is the creation of the new conventional wisdom about parenting.
Thus, they have been convinced that they are special in every way, and that their success
is virtually preordained if they carefully work within the rules that their parents and other
authority figures have constructed. In this Weltanschauung, the Millennials are much more
outward directed. They crave the structure that limits their freedom in their own life,
and tend to espouse conservative positions on the larger questions of the day. Their parents
have carefully sheltered them, apparently protecting their investments in their most important projects. At the same time, these parents have exerted unprecedented levels of stress

Timothy J. Fogarty is a Professor at Case Western Reserve University.

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upon their children so that they are more likely to produce the major social indications of
success. The Millennials also reflect the broader trends of the day. They accept the role
of rapid technological advance by seamlessly incorporating the next new thing into their
lives. They do not chafe at the idea of working in groups or at publically exhibiting themselves or their efforts. They relish the premises of a consumer society. These generalizations
pass for the essence of what distinguishes Millennials from other age groups. Howe and
Strauss (2000) offer hundreds of pages to detail these assertions, and countless others pick
and choose their favorites.
The profile presented rings true in a thousand different anecdotes among Americans
who have benefited from the rise of middle-class prosperity after the World War II. In many
ways, Millennials are a logical extension of the Baby Boomers. Millenials exist because it
pleased their parents and grandparents, and because the material conditions of society made
this indulgence possible. Thus, the first myth to confront is that this new generation has
been thrust upon us from conditions that could not have been predicted.
In many ways, the core psychological tenet of the Millennial phenomenon is the value
of positive self-esteem. Previous generations have burnished the rough edges of distribution
so as to insist on good results. Best captured by Garrison Kelliers codaall the children are above averagethe world that Millenials found was one that did warfare on
unacceptable results. Judging by the grade inflation that this has brought, one might be
tempted to believe that a wave of brilliance had descended upon us. Since we have good
evidence to believe otherwise, we have to accept that a world of lowered standards has
been ushered in for some purpose. The power of positive thinking appears to have won out
over the school of hard knocks.
What accounting educators should do in the face to what could be called pathological
appreciation is not clear. Meeting Millenniums on their own terms requires mitigating the
harsh results often produced by a discipline that many just dont get. Perhaps through
the identification of alternative means of demonstrating competency, this can be approached.
The tyranny of right-wrong, long since the sine qua non of accounting problems and
exercises, makes equivocation uncharted territory for accounting educators. Perhaps the
gravitation toward fair value will be the camels nose under this tent. In that a movement
away from historical costs will make accounting less like a science and more like an art,
there may be more room to appreciate the new generation.
Accounting does provide a highly structured environment that should appeal to a group
of people who were never told to go out and play but were instead fit into pre-formed
leagues and adult-centric motifs. One might think that since high-need-for-structure students
have always provided the bulk of the accounting student ranks, their numbers will be more
plentiful. To do their part to ensure that this happens, instructors can choose to emphasize
the tradition and the stability of the discipline. For many, this provides the comforting niche
in the world that the Millennials have been led to believe has always awaited them. Some
will find their more personalized solution in those areas where accounting lacks complete
closure. Accounting instructors are advised to show a bit of this value-added zone, but
not too much of it. The world is not as black-and-white as the Millennials would like it,
but that should be the province of our graduate level coursework, if we can succeed in
getting enough of them to that point.
Millennials pride themselves on their tech-savvy nature. They have become quite powerful in the market, fueling the demand for the latest in communication and information
processing capabilities. However, perhaps we over-value such proclivity. If it is just consumerism of a particular sort, then celebrations may be misplaced. The entire idea of

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The Millennial Lie

technology is to create a highly sophisticated item that is user-friendly. Users, by definition, learn little about operation and, by using, merely impress non-users. This becomes
problematic when use takes on a symbolic valence such that use begins to connote social
worthiness. Accounting instructors get tugged into such an arms race and feel that they
must prove their value by using the tools that increasingly surround us. Obviously, technology used appropriately can add drama and vigor to accounting education. However, in
its symbolic form, technology can displace the more basic skills of reading and writing.
The question that must be posed when sating the Millennial desire to be awash in technology is, What is the opportunity cost?
Millennials have been hailed as ideal team players. This is based on the premise that
they are a product of a post-secondary education steeped in group-based work. However,
how they will function in groups, and what they have actually learned about teams, are
untested empirical assertions. The broader heterogeneity of college students, compounded
by more variable motivation, will make university teams more difficult to manage and
operate. Does anyone believe that the advent of the Millennial generation has quashed the
free-rider problem? Millennials do not seem any less likely to transpose a group assignment
into a set of smaller individual assignments that must subsequently be collated and stapled.
Accounting should serve as the religion of the Millennial generation insofar as it established reasonably objective indicators of success toward which behavior can be targeted.
Millennials have been raised under the flag of accountability whether for themselves or for
the institutions that serve them. Whereas we can all appreciate the need to know more
about how the score is kept, we should also put scorekeeping in perspective. The outer
directedness of the Millennials, taken to an extreme, suggests the absence of a resilient
internal set of values that can buffer a person from the consequences of poor results. A
rich interior life, untethered to the ability to command an ever-increasing quantity of goods
and services, might be worth cultivating. Accounting instructors have historically played to
a more receptive audience when they pander to marketplace measures of success. Perhaps
they should link themselves more forcefully to the liberal arts. A lesson about Pacioli might
be better than one on Warren Buffet.
In sum, our job as educators might be to swim against the tide. One such tide is the
conventional descriptions that we receive about the innate qualities of young people. Some
correction occurs naturally. Just as the boring Baby Boomers of today were once freespirited revolutionaries, the Millennials will also soon become the bedrock of society. They
too will have to live with the irony that they have become their parents. In the meanwhile,
educators should use their marginal influence over the young to facilitate the counterbalance. The precious specialness of the Millennial generation is a lie, albeit a rather entertaining one, to which we need not subscribe. We can choose other and better foma.

REFERENCES
Howe, N., and W. Strauss. 2000. Millennial Rising: The Next Great Generation. New York, NY:
Vintage Books.
Vonnegut, K. 1963. Cats Cradle. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

Issues in Accounting Education, August 2008