More importantly, students’ focus on achievement has not produced young men and women who are, in any way, immoral, by which I mean, selfish, or cruel. At least, there is no real evidence for this. They are probably less bigoted, racist, and sexist than were prior generations of students. That’s easy to caricature as political correctness, but it’s no small achievement, especially if you’re a minority, a woman, or gay. In the time I have spent on college campuses, I have found students to be thoughtful, interesting, and stimulating. The Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker, who has spent much more time teaching college students, has written in the same vein.

Now, there are anecdotes on either side of this issue. But is there any evidence? Yes. Since 1966, UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute has asked incoming college freshmen a set of questions. The data collected show the following: Over the last four decades, students have become more conscious of the need to make money. But much of that change took place from 1967 to 1987, and the percentage of freshmen who identify “becoming well off financially” as a personal objective has steadied significantly since then. That’s surely a rational response to the great post-1960s slowdown of the American economy and a world of greater competition, churn, and anxiety. In such circumstances, to be concerned about one’s future might be a sign of intelligence! Other life objectives that have risen in importance to students are “becoming a community leader,” “helping others who are in difficulty,” and, interestingly, “making a theoretical contribution to science”—none of which are signs of selfishness.

The data also show that students today combine their worldly aspirations with a strong desire to do good. The numbers who volunteer for programs like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps have risen substantially. In 2014, Teach for America received over 50,000 applications, more than twice the number received in 2008. While the enrollment numbers have dipped for the last two years, the number of people applying has soared since the organization's founding. Many talented and highly credentialed students choose to work at nonprofits for a while after graduating. It’s true that nongovernmental organizations have become cool, but that is the point: They have become cool precisely because young people today view them as a valuable and worthwhile way to spend part—or all—of their lives. As much as students from any generation before them who might have gone into politics and government or volunteered for war and exploration, they want to do good, change the world, and follow their principles. They just do it in an incremental, practical, “best-practices” kind of way—more McKinsey than Mother Teresa.

Somewhat different from “college students” is the broader group of Millennials—generally the term is used for people born between 1980 and 2000. The charges against them are similar, though, and nastier. The cover story in Time magazine accuses them of narcissism, entitlement, and (this is a new one) laziness. The first charge is presented as a “cold, hard” fact. Citing the National Institutes of Health, the columnist Joel Stein writes, “The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their twenties as for the generation that’s now 65 or older.” But as the journalist Elspeth Reeve has pointed out, this finding is disputed by other scholars who note that the research merely shows that while all young people tend to be somewhat narcissistic, the narcissism fades as they grow up. To quote the 2010 study that Reeve cites, “there is no increase in narcissism in college students over the last few decades.” As for sloth, there is really no evidence for this at all. The basic problem for American workers of all ages has been that their hours and productivity keep rising but their wages do not.