When Hope and Fear Collide: A Portrait of Today's College Student

--GwAndolyn Jordan Dungy, executive director, NASPA

In his 1980 book When Dreams and Heroes Died, Arthur Levine presented a portrait of a generation of college students without heroes?a generation that turned inward, away from activism and community and toward individual and material gain.

But when Levine returned to campuses in the 1990s, he discovered a startling and encouraging shift in the attitudes of the new generation of students. When Hope and Fear Collide examines a generation motivated by a conflicting sense of hope and fear. While today's students fear a great many things both on a global and local level they are less pessimistic than the previous generation, as they look for ways to make a difference in their world. Campus faculty, administrators, and student services professionals are in a pivotal position?able to nurture students' hopes and help them confront and overcome their fears. Levine and Cureton give them the information they need to make a difference.

Contents:

Generation Without a Name

Flaws, Problems, and Decline: The New Localism

Campus Politics: Let the Buyer Beware!

Multiculturalism: The Campus Divided

Personal Life: Retreat from Intimacy

Academics: Search for an Insurance Policy

The Future: Doing Well of Doing Good

Conclusion: A Transitional Generation

Arthur Levine is president and professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Jeanette S. Cureton served as assistant to the president at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, and as a research assistant to Arthur Levine at the Harvard Graduate School of Educa