Beloit College drops Mindset List.”
Unfortunately, neither Beloit nor Ron Nief gave her any useful information so her best source is this humble blog, specifically our post, Mindset List doesn’t “speak to the college’s key brand attributes” says “social listening agency.”
What struck my interest was this preposterous claim by Nief: “If you read the lists, it never says ‘They don’t know.’ It’s about their life experiences. TWA never existed in their lifetime. It doesn’t say, “They don’t know TWA.’”
I knew immediately this wasn’t true because Nief and Tom McBride are incorrigible fabricators of claims about the Mindset List. Thus, the following examples of the Mindset List claiming that entering college students don’t know something:
They do not know what the Selective Service is, but men routinely register for it on their financial aid forms. (Class of 2005, #36)
They have probably never used carbon paper and do not know what cc and bcc mean. (Class of 2005, #39)
With little need to practice, most of them do not know how to tie a tie. (Class of 2009, #6)
The Biblical sources of terms such as “Forbidden Fruit,” “The writing on the wall,” “Good Samaritan,” and “The Promised Land” are unknown to most of them. (Class of 2016, #3)
While they’ve grown up with a World Trade Organization, they have never known an Interstate Commerce Commission. (Class of 2017, #23)
Family Guy is the successor to the Father Knows Best they never knew. (Class of 2021, #54)
Attention journalists! Don’t fall for the Mindset List’s tall tales. Its creators’ claims about the list’s origins and benevolent purpose are no more accurate than their claims about the knowledge of entering college students.