This season, millions of students have entered college for the first time. On average, these members of the Class of 2009 will be 18 years old, which means they were born in 1987. Starbucks, souped-up car stereos, telephone voicemail systems and Bill Gates have always been a part of their lives.

Each August, as students start to arrive, Beloit College releases its Mindset List, which offers a world view of today's entering college students. It is the creation of Tom McBride, Beloit's Keefer Professor of the humanities and Ron Nief, director of public affairs Ron Nief.

McBride, who directs Beloit's First Year Initiatives program for entering students, notes that "this year's entering students have grown up in a country where the main business has become business, and where terrorism, from obscure beginnings, has built up slowly but surely to become the threat it is today. Cable channels have become as mainstream as the 'Big 3' used to be, formality in dress has become more quaint than ever, and Aretha Franklin, Kermit the Frog and Jimmy Carter have become old-timers."

"Each year," according to Nief, "when Beloit releases the Mindset List, it is the birth year of the entering students that is the most disturbing fact for most readers. This year will come as no exception and, once again, the faculty will remain the same age as the students get younger."

The list is distributed to faculty on campus during the New Student Days orientation.

"It is an important reminder, as faculty start to show signs of 'hardening of the references,' that we think about the touchstones and benchmarks of a generation that has grown up with CNN, home computers, AIDS awareness, digital cameras and the Bush political dynasty," Nief said. "We should also keep in mind that these students missed out on the pleasures of being tossed in the back of a station wagon with a bunch of friends and told to keep the noise down, walking in the woods without fearing Lyme Disease or setting out to try all of the 28 ice cream flavors at Howard Johnson's."

Mindset List for the Class of 2009