The MTV-Generation As An Afterthought

The Post-Everything Generation Had A Dream ... And Failed?

I am a 23-year-old student enrolled in a liberal arts degree program in English and French from one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Germany, and my parents think I am a failure. Now, on the eve of my 24^th B-day it is time to take inventory, settle my accounts and cut my losses.

                My generation of ill repute is frowned upon as the MTV-generation, defined by what we failed to do, establish a cultural niche. We are post-feminist, post-modernist, post-structuralist, post-Marxist, post-materialistic and by now even post-capitalist. However post is just a fancy prefix for saying after. How do we distinguish ourselves from the hippies, yuppies, the baby boomers? The old road has continuously been fading under our feet but it seems with the recession and the Euro crisis and the debts piling, there are no sufficient funds to build a new one. Times indeed have changed. We have officially become an after, as in after-effect, aftershock, aftermath, aftertaste or simply an afterthought.

I am too young to slip slowly from the hormone filled hassle of my teenage years into a midlife crisis, partially because I simply do not have the funds to compensate by buying a shiny new Porsche. Despite the myriad of newspaper articles, blogger comments and uplifting feature articles about this generation’s optimism concerning their bright futures, the protests against the Magna Charta Universitatum echo loudly through the hallowed halls of Freiburg University. Bowing down to the dictum of Anglophone hegemony, we did away with the Diplom and Magister all in the name of “harmonizing the architecture of the European Higher Education system”. While German Education minister Annette Schavan recently spoke of a "European success story", Der Spiegel contradicts her, reporting that the Bologna reform furthers the disenfenchisement of the higher education system. Universities, even those with the extra cash provided by the Excellence Initiative, struggle with the flood of new enrollments. The ambitious reforms fell short of their goals to internationalize studies. In spite of the new European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) many courses are still incompatible. Thus, even though every student is encouraged to go abroad, getting your credits recognized is another matter altogether, which could ultimately mean that you lose an entire year. Another even graver problem linked to money matters. The system proves inflexible, as the universities push new students through their studies in three years instead of four. Originally the university system was supposed to educate an academic elite, however with the new reform those grand humanistic ideals of a well-rounded education seem to have been lost along the way. Even though many students wish to continue their studies to improve their chances on a tougher job market, most universities do not have enough money to create places in Master programs.

In my first semester each freshman heard the same motivational speech, that they were the pioneers of a new system. Yet the glorified Bologna propaganda cannot obscure the fact that even students with that fabled pioneer spirit, taking part in a new westward migration towards an anglicized and international scholarly Eden, become more and more disillusioned, when faced with the direct consequences of the grand educational reform. According to the federal education report the drop out rate in German Universities is 20 % to 30 %. Most students cite achievement or financial problems, the lack of motivation and general study conditions as their reasons for dropping out. As a result the industry as well as policy makers in Berlin fear an even greater threat of a shortage of skilled labor. The voices of my generation, the future leaders of this country, seem strangely silent on this subject matter. The post-something generation with their been-there-done-that attitude does not shake down windows and rattle walls; they continue their existence in a complex hall of mirrors, between pale and fractured copies of legendary personalities of almost mythical proportions – heroes of a bygone era. The hippies have retired and the former student revolutionaries have grown up. What remains is the desire for a cause, something that is worth fighting for or simply an identity building moment.

 Even today the echo of that first introduction into university life all those years ago still rings in my ears. Unfortunately, now we dance to a different tune, still classic, even though a less joyous one, written by composer Ennio Morricone for the 1960s western Once upon a time in the West. In the German version while Harmonica silently shoves his instrument between Frank’s teeth he says: “Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod, Frank!” (Play me the song of death, Frank).