The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School

Much writing on higher education falls into predictable categories, such as moralistic (sometimes voyeuristic) screeds about debased student culture or high-minded praise of the transformative power of the liberal arts. Tim Clydesdale's "The First Year Out" is neither of these. Instead, it's a rigorous, engaging, beautifully written work of social science that tracks a representative sample of teens through the last year of high school and first year of college. Clydesdale's empirically based analysis is unassailable, but no one is likely to be comfortable with all his conclusions. Contrary to the moralists, Clydesdale reports that most students are onlookers, not participants, in the hedonism sensationalized by novelist Tom Wolfe. Dashing the hopes of liberal arts idealists, he demonstrates that few students are willing to wrestle with fundamental questions about identity, belief or politics during their first year out. Clydesdale argues that we need to shed preconceptions, "lower our lofty ideals," and engage students as they are, not as we imagine or wish them to be. Everyone involved in higher education--professors, administrators, student affairs professionals--should read "The First Year Out."

Tim Clydesdale's book, The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School (University of Chicago Press, 2007) demands the close attention of all who teach at the post-secondary level. The author, a sociologist, has interviewed in depth a large cohort of high school seniors and college freshmen. He seeks to understand how they see themselves--and how they see the role of course-related study in their lives. Clydesdale has discovered many things that college and university faculty may find challenging and even upsetting. He finds most students "culturally inoculated against intellectual curiosity and creative engagement." They are preoccupied instead by the pursuit of "happiness and fulfillment" through "personal relationships and individual consumption." While Clydesdale strips away illusions, he also provides a foundation from which to rethink the ways that faculty might better approach students. This book is academic social science at its best. Everyone who teaches at the college or university level should read The First Year Out.

I found this book incredibly interesting and I think it is useful for a wider audience than just fellow sociologists, a true work of "public sociology". From the vantage-point of a relatively recent alumni of a high school very similar to the pseudonymous "NJ High" and a current scholar/educator, I think it will be interesting, engaging, and useful for all scholars, educators, parents and teens (hopefully some will read this work it even if not required of them). I do think my somewhat insider-status gives me a bit of authority to say that Clydesdale's work was extremely insightful and his observations and perceptions were right on. I couldn't help but think of my own position while reading the book, not far removed from the teen years under discussion, but also finding myself in the early years of "intelligentsia" and scholarship as a current PhD candidate. While reading, I caught myself looking back and trying to place myself into the framework set out by Clydesdale, and the roles of my own family, faith and community. The themes of students' love of learning being dulled by boredom, complacency, and being unchallenged in school were true not only of myself but large numbers of my fellow teenage students. I was not at the level of "future intelligentsia" of say a "Rob Robertson" while in high school or even my first year out, so I may be an example of Clydesdale's theory that the second and third years of college offer an opportunity to broaden perspectives and engage interests. I was also able to read this work as someone who is just starting to work with teens from the other side of the discussion, teaching and engaging with primarily first and second year university students in and out of the classroom. Thus Clydesdale's comments on grade inflation and students "playing the game" through face-time and once-a-class surface level engagement rang particularly true (as did his discussion of out-of-touch professors and scholars for that matter). The discussion towards the end of the book about students building tents on tentative ground particularly worthy of note and of use in understanding students' world-views.

Tim Clydesdale gives us a forthright and candid description of college students today -- a dose of reality that I hope will help faculty members communicate more effectively with their students. Today's freshmen do not seek to understand Aeschylus or John Stuart Mill -- but they are savvy and practical. Faculty who can reach them "where they are" will be much better teachers and will help those students move toward maturity and even intellectual engagement. Clydesdale offers some advice on how to achieve that level of communication.

A very enjoyable read that dispels many of our myths about what goes on during that first year of college. Dr. Clydesdale's book is both scholarly and fun, and we finished the book feeling like we had a much better understanding of the complexity of the lives of "real" teens. His central thesis, that teens' values are not so much undermined as they are underutilized, is very useful. Specifically, his research demonstrates an interesting pattern by which students come to college with a given religious identity and values, then store these in what he calls an "identity lockbox," where they remain for the duration of their college years both unchallenged and unaccessed. This is a remarkable and important insight, and provides readers with a powerful tool for understanding the lives of first year students. As Christian workers and non-specialists we found this book very accessible and would recommend it to anyone who works with teens.