Parents

Copying and pasting from Wikipedia in your college papers may seem totally normal to many college students, but this NYT article ("Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age") makes clear that (1) there is a casual attitude among many students about what constitutes plagiarism, and (2) copying and pasting and "borrowing" language is still considered plagiarism by any self-respecting university. From the article:

At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site's frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.

At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student's copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.

And at the University of Maryland, a student reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia in a paper on the Great Depression said he thought its entries — unsigned and collectively written — did not need to be credited since they counted, essentially, as common knowledge.

Professors used to deal with plagiarism by admonishing students to give credit to others and to follow the style guide for citations, and pretty much left it at that.

But these cases — typical ones, according to writing tutors and officials responsible for discipline at the three schools who described the plagiarism — suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed.

It does appear to be a pervasive problem: a recent study found that "40 percent of 14,000 undergraduates admitted to copying a few sentences in written assignments."

Is this just another Gen Y phenomenon? The last paragraph of the article suggests there may be more at work:

And then there was a case that had nothing to do with a younger generation’s evolving view of authorship. A student accused of plagiarism came to Mr. Dudley’s office with her parents, and the father admitted that he was the one responsible for the plagiarism. The wife assured Mr. Dudley that it would not happen again.

In the admissions process, I see parents crossing ethical lines with some regularity. That's not just student laziness; that's also a message from such parents that the ends justify the means, and I would think that's not the best way to help launch their kids into adulthood.

I bring this all up not to finger-wag, but to remind college students that if you get caught plagiarizing -- even if YOU don't consider it plagiarizing -- there are likely to be longer-term consequences that can affect your graduate school applications down the road. If your college, or even just an individual professor, takes any action against you for plagiarism, you will have to disclose that on your applications. Examples of such actions, whether as a result of cheating on a test, lifting language from someone else's paper, or copying and pasting from online sources without attribution, can include things like:

• Giving you a failing grade and making you redo the test/paper/exam/class
• Initiating formal proceedings within the college
• Making you appear before an academic integrity/honor code/academic honesty panel
• Recording a finding of academic dishonesty in your permanent college record

Even if nothing ever gets noted in your official college record, and even if such a notation gets expunged after a certain period of time, you would still be expected to disclose in your applications that any action was ever taken. And graduate schools take academic integrity violations seriously, so think twice before you borrow someone else's language in any of your college work or on your applications. The consequences are hardly worth it.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Why this epidemic of plagiarism? Is it really something new under the sun, or it is just the old-fashioned vice of laziness manifesting itself on a larger, technology-enabled scale? I'm especially intrigued by this argument made in the article by Sarah Wilenski, a senior at Indiana University:

“[Plagiarism] may be increasingly accepted, but there are still plenty of creative people — authors and artists and scholars — who are doing original work,” Ms. Wilensky said in an interview. “It’s kind of an insult that that ideal is gone, and now we’re left only to make collages of the work of previous generations.”

In the view of Ms. Wilensky, whose writing skills earned her the role of informal editor of other students’ papers in her freshman dorm, plagiarism has nothing to do with trendy academic theories.

The main reason it occurs, she said, is because students leave high school unprepared for the intellectual rigors of college writing.

“If you’re taught how to closely read sources and synthesize them into your own original argument in middle and high school, you’re not going to be tempted to plagiarize in college, and you certainly won’t do so unknowingly,” she said.

At the University of California, Davis, of the 196 plagiarism cases referred to the disciplinary office last year, a majority did not involve students ignorant of the need to credit the writing of others.

Many times, said Donald J. Dudley, who oversees the discipline office on the campus of 32,000, it was students who intentionally copied — knowing it was wrong — who were “unwilling to engage the writing process.”

“Writing is difficult, and doing it well takes time and practice,” he said.

Yes it is, and yes it does. Do you agree that students are plagiarizing because they are underprepared for college-level analysis and writing? Please weigh in.

Related postings from the Ivey Files archives:

• You're Not Fooling Anyone
• A Tweet Stream Is Not an Essay
• Dealing With Your Past: Disclosing Criminal Issues on Law School Applications
• 34 Duke MBA Students Punished for Cheating
• Study: MBA Students the Biggest Cheaters

My son has a felony conviction.  During a drunken night out two years ago, he and some friends broke into several homes in our neighborhood.  He was arrested and then he pled guilty in a plea bargain agreement in which he paid $3,000 in restitution and was given 5 years probation.  Since then, he has attended a community college, has a GPA of 3.82 and is a member of an honor society there.  He has also curbed his drinking.  In short, he's turned it all around.  Now he's applying to four year colleges, including Emory, Wake Forest, and University of Virginia.  He's afraid of how the conviction will impact his chance of being admitted and getting financial aid.  What should he do?   

Congratulations to your son in turning it around.  He should be proud of that accomplishment.  Most of us have episodes in our past that we would prefer we didn't.  But, the best way forward is always to learn from our mistakes and then move on.

Your son is right that his criminal conviction adds an additional hurdle to admission, but it is possible that he can clear that hurdle.  In order to do that, he needs to make a persuasive case that he is a compelling applicant who made a big mistake in the past, but that he has learned from it and will be a positive contributor to the college if admitted. 

So first, he should concentrate on preparing a great application that highlights all of his academic and other achievements.  He will have to check a box somewhere that he has a criminal conviction, but he should not make it the "center" of his application.  For example, he should write a personal essay that focuses on something positive about him, not on the circumstances surrounding his criminal conviction.

Although it should not be the center of his application, he should address the criminal conviction in a supplemental essay.  The first part of the essay should be a straightforward, forthright presentation of the facts.  No excuse making, no "totally unfair" etc.  The second part of the essay should be how he has changed his behavior since the conviction and his commitment to never doing something illegal or wrong again.  The third and final part of the essay should be what he has learned from the whole experience.

Beyond the supplemental essay, he should consider what he can do that will reinforce his application and confirm that he has turned it around.  For example, he could obtain a recommendation from someone who can affirm that he has changed his behavior and learned from the experience -- his probation officer, a teacher who knew him before/after, a dean at the community college would all be possibilities for this recommendation.  If he is given an opportunity to interview, he should take it and be prepared to address his criminal conviction during the interview.  A personal encounter can be very persuasive.

I will note that the fact that your son has not yet completed his probation may work against him; the incident is not fully "behind" him.  If he is not admitted in his first round, I'd encourage him to enroll in a less selective four year college, get his undergraduate degree and then consider a more selective school for graduate study, when he has an even deeper record of high performance, has completed his probation, and is even further away in time from the conviction.

In terms of financial aid, your son will be eligible based on the rules governing each college's financial aid.  It is probably unlikely that he will be a competitive candidate for merit based scholarships, but he may very well be awarded need-based scholarships, loans, or work-study aid.  I would counsel him to first seek admission and then worry about financial aid.

Good luck to him!

If you have a question about how to address a difficult situation in the admissions process, we'd love to hear from you.  Post a comment!

Alison Cooper Chisolm has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here. 

Yesterday we received a question regarding letters of recommendation:

My son is applying to law school. I am a senior civil services officer of the Delhi Government in India, and I wish to know whether, if I write a recommendation for my son, it will be accepted and considered seriously. I think I know him better than any other person and I can be very objective in my assessment.

It's not surprising that this mom -- like many moms-- wants to do everything she can to help her son with his application But a letter of recommendation from mom or dad is not going to help this student, at least with U.S. law schools. In fact, a letter from a relative is more likely to raise eyebrows in admissions offices.

First, parents would never be deemed "objective" sources of information concerning their children, even if parents recognize their children's weaknesses.

Moreover, law schools want academic references. Recently I posted a blog titled "Law School Letters of Recommendation: Act Now!" I discussed the importance of finding recommenders who will be able to discuss your academic abilities, since these are considered the best predictors of law school success: intellect, analytical ability, research skills, oral and written communication skills. Focus on obtaining letters from two professors who can discuss these skills with detailed examples of your work in their classes; you can refresh their memories by providing copies of your essays and exams.

This mom is well-meaning, but her help will be most effective if she provides support and encouragement directly to her son, and steers clear of the admissions officers.

Nicole Vikan is a graduate of NYU Law School. She spent her first law school summer at a large law firm, and her second summer in the Homicide Investigation Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. She returned to the District Attorney's Office after graduation and spent five years as a criminal prosecutor, handling cases such as robbery and assault. Nicole then joined Fordham Law School's Career Planning Center, where she advised students seeking employment in the private and public sectors. She is currently a career counselor at Georgetown Law Center's Office of Public Interest and Community Service. As part of the Anna Ivey team, Nicole works with law school applicants and people exploring legal careers.

There are several reasons why this BBC article is very, very funny. Among them:

For those of us old enough to have used Walkmen (Walkmans?), it's hilarious to read about someone from the iPod generation experimenting with his dad's antediluvian portable music device. ("It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape." "I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.")

And while I can't speak for this particular writer -- I can't accuse the writer or the BBC of anything -- I suspect that the person who wrote these words is not, in fact, 13 years old. ("Genre-specific"? Please.) Examples that set off my Dad-Wrote-This detector:

• "So it's not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing choice of music player."
• "From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets."
• "But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down 'rewind' and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured."
• "Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis."
• "Not long after the music warbled into life, it abruptly ended."
• "Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?"
• "But given the dreadful battery life, I guess this was an outright necessity rather than an extra function."

I don't have any trouble believing that these observations came from someone so young that he can't fathom a device that doesn't shuffle your music for you. But I do suspect strongly that dad had a hand here in a ghostwriting capacity. The examples I quoted above are not the vernacular that typically emerges from the mouths of 13-year-old boys, even in the U.K. (Americans seem to think that all kids over there sound like Harry Potter. They do not.)

Why do I dwell on this? It's a hilarious article, I'm glad they wrote it, and it made me laugh. Hats off to them. However... it reminds me to remind you (especially the parents out there) that when you meddle too much with your child's writing in the application process, admissions officers can smell that A MILE AWAY. They want to receive applications from your kids, not from you.

I have had a number of conversations with parents that go something like this:

Anna: Very nice essay.

Dad: Yes, we (!) really like it.

Anna: I'm hearing more [dad] in here than [daughter].

Dad: [Protracted silence.] Wow, you can tell?

Anna: Yep. Did you write the whole thing?

Dad: Well... uh. It's really her ideas.

Anna: She needs to write it, too.

Dad: So you're telling us to scrap this and start over?

Anna: Yes.

Many parents tell me that they are "best friends" with their kids, and they seem to think that means they have picked up the vernacular so well that they can mimic their children in their written work. But people who read essays from teenagers every day can tell the difference between the voice of a forty-something (or older) and the voice of a teenager.

So my advice, as always, is to keep a proper distance from your kids' writing. It's OK for you to help them generate and evaluate good essay ideas and topics, teach them how to improve their grammar and their spelling and their punctuation, encourage them to edit and edit and edit again, teach them how to proofread, and help them as they make editorial decisions about what to cut and what to keep.

Ghostwriting, though, is not OK, and parent-written essays uniformly end up being worse than the real thing. They are too safe, they are too boring, they sound phony, and they don't capture, in any way, the quirky and very fleeting way that teenagers observe their world or describe it. That quirkiness should be embraced, not stamped out.

And that's true for admissions consultants as well: your/our job is to draw out the best material and writing from applicants, in their own words and in their own voices. More than that crosses a line.

As I drove through Palo Alto recently, I saw the sobering reminders of the toll that depression can take on young people. Police officers sat guard at three spots where the local commuter trains pass over open road. During the last month, two teenagers from a local high school have ended their lives on those tracks, stepping in front of a speeding engine. A third tried to do the same, but was pulled back by his mother, police, and a passing motorist.

It has left a community shaken and on the local newspapers website, there are the inevitable murmurings about blame: the schools ask too much of kids. The trains should be put underground. Teenagers need to get more sleep. The local counseling service is failing. The high school is too large.

The pressure on these teenagers is intense to be sure. But surely preventing suicide isn't as simple as changing the configuration of the train tracks or making finals optional.

Cornell University - a place with an old reputation as a pressure cooker - has tried a unique approach.: make watching out for signs of depression everyone's job. The janitors - who see when someone is vomiting repeatedly - know that is a red flag. The doctors at student health screen for depression, even when the visit is for something else. Teams of staff from different areas of the university meet regularly to share impressions, allowing them to piece together the complex picture of how an at-risk student is doing.

It's a radical idea: maybe the solution isn't in the hands of the parents or teachers or administrators or counselors alone. Maybe it is our job - all of us who work with and live with children and teenagers - to know what depression looks like, to name it, and to talk about how to treat it.

Signs of depression in teenagers (Source: Suicide Prevention Resource Center): 

• A sudden worsening in school performance
• Withdrawal from friends and extracurricular activities
• Expressions of sadness and hopelessness, or anger and rage
• A sudden, unexplained decline in enthusiasm and energy
• Overreaction to criticism
• Lowered self-esteem, or feelings of guilt
• Indecision, lack of concentration, and forgetfulness
• Restlessness and agitation
• Changes in eating or sleeping patterns
• Unprovoked episodes of crying
• Sudden neglect of appearance and hygiene
• Seeming to feel tired all the time, for no apparent reason
• Use of alcohol or other drugs

Once we have recognized the challenges students face, the next step is to not hesitate to bring in a professional to help. A psychologist can identify and treat true depression. A trusted teacher will be a touchstone for students during the school day. And a college admissions counselor might provide unbiased advice during the stressful application process. We collectively need to make sure students are served well in every way.

Christine Foster graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in American History before embarking on a career as a journalist. As a former reporter for Forbes magazine in New York and Silicon Valley, Christine wrote articles on business and education-related issues, including privatization of school lunch programs and a cover story on school vouchers. One of her feature stories for Stanford's alumni magazine, on homeschoolers admitted to Stanford, continues to make the rounds on the internet many years after publication. Christine is based out of Silicon Valley and works with college applicants as part of the Anna Ivey team.

As the college admissions season starts to wrap up, I wanted to share some observations from another very interesting year:

Rock Climbing

I sat on a number of college admissions panels this past year (seminars and workshops for applicants and their parents), and one exchange in particular stood out for me.

As we were discussing school visits and the best ways to go about picking a college, one mom raised her hand and launched into a discussion about her son's grand passion for rock climbing. She recounted their various school visits in terms of this rock climbing wall and that rock climbing program, and she asked me to weigh in. How should they go about making their decision?

My response: "So you're going to select your son's college education based on a rock climbing wall?"

The room fell dead silent, and then people started laughing (including the mom who had asked the question). I hadn't meant to be sarcastic or snarky, and I don't think they took it that way. I had wanted to find a way to suggest that they might have lost some perspective and that they should take a step back and reassess what their priorities are in a college education.

Sometimes those priorities get lost in the big shuffle of the college application process, especially when schools in recent years have been seducing applicants (and their parents) with bling-bling amenities, gadgets, and facilities. That's less of a problem in this new era of shrinking endowments and budget cuts, but the overall message remains.

In any event, apparently that one-line response did the trick, and now "rock climbing" is my shorthand for asking people to reflect on their priorities in the college search process, whatever their priorities might be.

Heartbreak

I also heard an admissions officer from a very competitive liberal arts college give some great advice to a group of high school students. Paraphrasing roughly: Admissions officers are trying to assemble well-rounded classes; they're not necessarily looking for well-rounded people. If you let yourself fall in love with one dream school in the application process, you are setting yourself up for heartbreak, because you have no way of knowing if the admissions team that year is going to be intensely interested in adding a soprano or a fencer or a debater or a trombonist or a Latinist to the mix. And whatever well-roundedness gaps they're looking to fill this year might be different from last year's, so predicting what those gaps will be -- and whom your dream school is going to court -- is difficult.

On a related note, I'm reminded that college admissions heartbreak can come from different sources. Over the years, I've heard from a number of applicants whose hearts were broken by an athletic coach who was courting them hard and making big promises about their likelihood of admission. It's amazing to me how many coaches talk as if admission were a done deal. Sometimes they have that kind of admissions pull, but sometimes they don't. Don't let a coach break your heart; take their promises of admission with a grain of salt. 

Community service

In talking to many college applicants as well as admissions officers, I've noticed that community service jobs have come to crowd out other kinds of extracurriculars. Service jobs are great, but admissions officers know that many high schools require them, or give out awards and perks for logging a minimum number of hours. As a result, community service has become highly inflated (in terms of résumé value), and it can be hard for an applicant to stand out through service activities alone.

One admissions officer also pointed out that it's immediately obvious when applicants haven't really internalized their service experience, because they parrot what some adult has told them to think about the experience. Guess what: teenagers don't observe the world or reflect on it the way grown-ups do. Admissions officers can spot the authentic reflections -- and the parroted ones -- a mile away, and that can sometimes mean the difference between acceptance and rejection at the most competitive schools.

Please share your own experiences and feedback. I'm curious to hear how the season went for you.

From our college admissions counselor Christine Foster:

At least one in every 150 children has some form of autism. These kids range from non-verbal toddlers lining up toy trains to talkative teenagers, whose special needs were noticed only when the organizational and social demands of adolescence began to overwhelm them. Each of them has parents who imagined a future life like their own, or even brighter, whose dreams were changed as they sat in a psychologist’s office. Last fall, my husband and I were the ones in that seat. Our bright, beautiful – and yes, quirky – 5 year-old son was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.

In the aftermath of his diagnosis, I began to look, among other things, at what resources there were at the college level. The answer? Not many. A handful of schools are offering special programs for kids with autism spectrum disorders. Others can seek services through their school disabilities office, but many aren’t equipped to deal with issues beyond academic accommodations. Need a time-extension for your tests or a note taker? Most can handle that. But for a kid with autism, who might need help organizing their school work, making connections with peers, or advocating for themselves with a professor, there isn’t as much available.

I’m now inspired to take a closer look at what’s out there and cast a critical eye to figure out what is working and what isn’t. As part of the Anna Ivey team, I work with college applicants, and my goal is to blog more about college offerings and the admissions process for students with special needs in particular -- from autism spectrum disorders and ADD/ADHD to learning disabilities and physical disabilities. If you have a question you’d like to see answered or a suggestion for a topic, please email us.

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First, a peek at a place that is doing it right. Marshall University in West Virginia has what was likely the first specific program aimed at serving students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Begin in 2002 with a single student, the program supports 20 full-time students. And Ellison expects demand to continue to burgeon. By February 1, he expects they will have sent out more than 200 applications for next year. Admissions are tough – in 2008, they received 30 applications, interviewed 26, and accepted just 5. Families pay a premium of $3200 per semester, above and beyond Marshall’s tuition to enroll their students.

Marc Ellison, the director of the program, who has worked supporting people with autism for more than 20 years, says there is definitely a sea change. “Clearly, it is a wave of 18, 19, 20 year old students unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Ellison says.

His program is ideal because they don’t offer cookie cutter services. They look at each student as an individual, assessing their strengths and needs and figuring out exactly what kind of scaffolding makes sense. Last year, one student, a music major, needed to pass a hearing in front of teachers before continuing in his field of study. But his anxiety about performing solo before that group was debilitating. Ellison’s staff helped to arrange two mock performances for the student to practice, gathering as many as 30 spectators for those sessions. The desensitization did the trick, and the student was able to continue forward with his music degree.

Unlike most college disabilities offices, Marshall’s program also provides support in three areas: academics, social, and independent living. The staff might, for example, help break down a larger assignment into smaller, more manageable chunks. The staff also has weekly contact with professors to see how things are going for their students. Socially, they run a social skills group where students can practice practical relationship building techniques. Students get hand-holding on balancing a check book, mapping out when bills are due, and helps some with monitoring to see that students are taking their medications. (Sounds like stuff many typically-developing students could use, too!)

So far, four students have graduated from the program. Two are working and two are in graduate school. But Ellison is quick to point out that the measures of success for these students might be different than for your average college student. Instead of graduating and getting a job, the bigger accomplishment might be staying social engaged.

Why bother, one might ask? Ellison’s answer is swift: “Frankly the time is right – with 1 in 150 or 1 in 166 with some kind of ASD, there is a tremendous blow coming to society if those children are undereducated. It is in everyone’s interest to recognize their strengths.”

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who works (as I do) with lots of twenty-somethings. When we got around to the gratuitous praise to which Gen Y/the "Praise Generation" has become accustomed (phony praise that inflates their sense of achievement and rewards them for process rather than outcomes), he had this observation to share:

On all of this, I'll point out that, having worked with a literally never-ending stream of recent college graduates--half of everyone is 22 in my world--I notice that the people who consistently are the best to work with are ex-elite athletes. If you spent a substantial chunk of your life in sports, how could you:

• Think fairness is relevant? Losers talk about fairness.
• Fail to put stock in hard work, hoping to hide in the pack instead?
• Think hard work guarantees success?
• Fail to appreciate the importance of natural talent?
• Fail to focus on outcomes?
• Over-focus on process to the detriment of outcomes?
• Get confused by multiple goals and so fail to achieve any of them?

I say this as someone who frankly is more committed to the arts than to sports, but it has become clear to me that those who live a life in the arts and/or academics are prone to *ALL* of the fatal mistakes outlined above, and these are failures of outlook that wouldn't last past your first varsity season in high school, let alone college.

The difference is simple--top athletes are trained to focus on outcomes, period. Everything else is whining. Business is about outcomes, period. Non-athletes are shocked by that.

As an addendum, I was amazed when I got to [college] how many kids arrived there believing they had genuine artistic talent. They were going to be performers, or artists, for a living. They thought themselves that good.

No similar problem with sports. But in the arts, it's subjective. If you are the best in your high school, well, as far as you can tell, you're Kristin Chenoweth. There's no mechanism -- or incentive -- to level-set. In individual sports, there's no chance of this at all. In team sports, there's a little self-delusion, but not too much. [Anna asks: But what about teams where everyone gets a trophy? Helicopter parents invented that rank stupidity. Makes sense though that *elite* athletes don't suffer from this syndrome.]

Can I speculate that this problem is more an issue in law school, where kids majored in subjective disciplines like Poli Sci, Religon, and other stuff, and that math and physics grad programs don't have these problems? Even med schools probably don't have the problem as much?

Fascinating. Thoughts? Please comment.

A lot of Gen Y experts out there are telling companies to suck up to Gen Y's parents. Here's an excerpt from a blog posting, for example, by Tammy Erickson in connection with her book ("Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving At Work") put out by Harvard Business Publishing (meaning, she's obviously no slouch):

• Distribute packs of information for parents to students at universities and job fairs
• Hold a career fair in your community designed specifically for parents
• Create special FAQ material directed at parents' likely questions and concerns (retirement, health benefits, 401(k) plans, educational opportunities and so on
• Hold parent orientation sessions or conference calls
• Invite parents of interns and new hires to visit the Y's place of work and meet the boss and colleagues
• Provide the staffing necessary to follow through with parent requests
• Run ads communicating your positive attributes as an employer aimed at parents
• Provide incentives for parents to refer their children (beginning with your current employees - if your current employees won't refer their own children, consider whether you really are a good employer)
• Include parents in employee benefits

Do you have a parent-approved brand?

I can see the short-term benefit of this kind of recruiting strategy. Very short-term. However, I wonder what kind of people you end up with when you use that kind of selection mechanism. Maybe the same subset of Gen Yers employers complain about all the time: the ones who don't show up on time, can't follow directions, can't make even simple decisions on their own, can't behave like grown-ups. I would posit that there's a connection between that kind of recruiting and that kind of employee.

So maybe you get entry-level bodies in the door that way. But what's that going to look like longer term? When you're trying to groom young employees to rise up through the management funnel? How do you make grown-ups, let alone leaders, out of people whom you selected for their dependent, child-like qualities?

I give Gen Y's parents a really hard time about infantilizing their grown children, and now companies are being encouraged to do the same thing. I have to think that's not a good outcome for those companies as a business matter, and it's downright toxic for Gen Y.

And for those whose immediate response is, "That's what Gen Y is like, there's no way around it," I say: You're not looking hard enough. You have to recruit more wisely than this, because with some of these recruiting strategies, you are inviting longer-term headaches.

Please weigh in. Am I wrong? And Gen Yers: do you want to be treated this way? Do you think that's a good thing?

(Here's my memo to employers; my memo to helicopter parents; and my memo to Gen Y. And here's a sample HR Director's lament.)

So I was catching up on my Tivo'ed Project Runway episodes the other night when I couldn't sleep. (I won't call it a guilty pleasure -- I will defend Project Runway 'til the end!)  Thought I could escape Gen Y issues for a brief spell? No sir. In this particular episode, the lovely Frau Klum challenged the designers to "design a look for recent college graduates who are starting their lives as independent professional women."

Independent? Really? Then why did all these young women BRING THEIR MOTHERS ALONG? Naturally, the moms started dominating the working relationship with the designers, and the designers started pitching to the moms rather than to the daughters/clients. In defending their designs to the judges, the designers would say things like, "Holly and her mother seemed really happy with it" -- a reminder that with Gen Y, parents are (almost) always part of the package. How old does Gen Y have to get before their parents back off? I'm intensely curious.

In any event, with the exception of the winning design by Jerell, these were some of the worst clothes you could ever see in the workplace. Or anywhere. Yikes. (Read the blow-by-blow here.)