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Serving and Surviving Chaos: A new world order for young SA Pros

August 8, 2016

Serving and surviving the chaos: A new world order for young SA Pros

By Nathan Balasubramanian, Wright State University.

“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” – George Orwell.

            Diversity is not just about race. In the modern world, every day a new multifaceted dimension is being added into the radical definition of the word diversity. In this context, let us focus on the intersection of one of those multifaceted dimensions: generation gap by age and generation gap by technology.

The Student Affairs profession is one of those fields where at every job anniversary, the generation gap between us and our primary clients, the students, increases by 1 year. 20 years is a time that is widely accepted as the beginning of a new generation. An average age of a Chief Student Affairs Officer (CSAO) is about 55 years (NASPA, 2014) and the average number of years a person serves as a CSAO is about 7 years (NASPA, 2014). An average minimum of 10 years of experience is required before a person will be appointed as a VPSA. The average percentage of undergraduate students under the age 25, enrolled full-time in 4-year public universities is 88% as of fall 2013 and private non-profit institutions is 86% (NECS, 2016). These numbers suggest that typically there is a minimum of 15-20 years age difference between the Chief Student Affairs officer and an average college freshman. This implies that, CSAOs are more likely to face the attrition due to the effects of generation gap, as they are from the previous generation.

A new dimension – Technology, was added to this generation gap in the last decade. There is no doubt that the technology, led by the internet, is profoundly affecting the cognitive psychology of humans. According to Moore’s law of computational science, the power of computers will increase every two years (Takahashi, 2005). Now applying this law to the human workforce, every two years the advancement in technology stretches the generation gap. Bridging this increasing generation gap is on the shoulders of young professionals. The intensity of the differences of opinions is a compound interest with the result of every arithmetic progression. The effects of the generation gap when combined with commonly used diversity terms such as gender, race, sexual identity, etc., will result in an exponential difference.  

As a representative of such a compound system, the young professionals act as a bridge between the generations, and serve the perfect chaos to CSAOs. Isn’t Chaos bad? No, Chögyam Trungpa, a Buddhist scholar once said: “The arrival of chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.” The Chaos theory of mathematics can be applied to the context of organizational leadership, in other words, Student Affairs, as – small differences (at the entry level) would yield widely diverging outcomes in the dynamics of Student Affairs. So chaos is the key to disturb the equilibrium and start the butterfly effect for an innovation (Wheatley, 2006). Chaos is the power to change and it is in the hands of new professionals.

Surviving the chaos is equally important as serving the chaos. As Littlefinger (fictional character) from Game of Thrones, an HBO original TV series says, “Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse.” To endure Chaos and master the art of creating the change, I would like to refer two books for you all to read: 1. Surfing the Edge of Chaos by Pascale, and 2. Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground by Jennifer Deal. Surfing the edge of chaos talks about the battles between forces of tradition and the forcers of transformation. It gives an idea about how to interact with ever changing environment. Retiring Generation Gap gives a practical approach on how to communicate across the generational borders in a work place.

 Nathan Balasubramanian is a native of Coimbatore, India and is currently pursuing Masters Degrees in Student Affairs in Higher Education, and Cyber Security at Wright State University, Ohio. He received his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science from Anna University, India. Prior to coming to United States, Nathan worked as Executive Student Affairs officer for a year in Kumaraguru College of Technology, India. Nathan served as the NASPA Graduate Associate (GAP) for 2015-16. He is the current Chief Policy Officer for Wright State Student Government and also serves on the Graduate Advisory Committee for It’s on US.  Tweet/follow Nathan Balasubramanian: @lnathanb.

National Center for Education Statistics (NECS, 2014). Retrieved on 3rd June 2016.   http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_csb.asp

NASPA annual survey of Chief Student Affairs Officers (NASPA, 2014). Retrieved on 3rd June 3, 2016  https://www.naspa.org{filedir_3}CSAO_2014_ExecSum_Download2.pdf

Takahashi, D (2005). "Forty years of Moore’s law". Seattle Times (San Jose, CA). Retrieved April 7, 2015. A decade later, he revised what had become known as Moore’s Law: The number of transistors on a chip would double every two years.

Wheatley, Margaret J. (2006). Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. (3rd Ed.) Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc.