Informal Paper
Informal Paper on Trends and Issues Facing
Today’s College Student
This is an "informal" paper, meaning that you can offer your opinion, thoughts and ideas, rather than a more formal research paper in which you must use published journal articles as the basis for your paper.
Topic: With this in mind, the goal of this paper is to compare and contrast the differing issues between today’s college students versus college student populations of a generation ago. Please address these questions:
What are the similarities or differences that you can identify between students on campus today versus 20 years ago? Reflect on what historical events and societal trends have influenced students over the past couple of decades.
Based on your observations or experiences with today’s college students, what do you believe are the three greatest challenges for contemporary students?
Your response should be based on personal observations as a college student, employee at a college or university, past learning experiences (from prior CSD/SA coursework), or gleanings from literature or other media.
If you feel you need additional information or help gaining a perspective on this issue, you may want to conduct an internet or journal article search for “today’s college students” and/or "college student issues of the 1980s" (for example). You don't need to have lived or been involved in higher education a generation ago to gain an understanding of the issues of college students of that time…some research will help you gain a perspective of these issues. If you choose to discuss other sources in your paper such as research literature or from the internet, please properly cite the information using APA format.
Guidelines: This paper requires you to discuss in depth the topic above. Please make sure your response is 3-4 double spaced pages (not counting title page and references) using Times New Roman, 12 point font. All work should include APA, 6th edition formatting including the title page, page numbers, headings, etc. Although this paper is more informal in nature, students are expected to use proper grammar that is reflective of graduate-level work. Points will be deducted for every grammatical and APA error so please double check for these!
