We Need a New American Dream

by Daniel R. Kittle, Ph.D., President, Dakota Wesleyan University

When I was a kid, I understood the American Dream as having a modest home, a two-parent household where dinner was shared regularly, two cars, two weeks of vacation—all supported by one job that, while not necessarily rewarding, was stable, and ideally, provided a pension. The fruits of a parent’s labor provided children with their own pieces of that dream: attending a local school, playing with friends and going to church on Sundays. Schools offered education, music, and sports—activities that built friendships and fostered growth—while neighbors and church communities provided soft boundaries and moral frameworks, shaping young people into individuals with a strong sense of right and wrong.

As a teenager, when the responsibilities of adulthood loomed, the American Dream seemed to be about doing better than your parents: a job that paid more, provided a bigger house, nicer cars, longer vacations, while maintaining that elusive balance between work and home life.

To be sure, this is an oversimplified version of a middle-class ideal, one that doesn’t fully account for the hardships experienced by some. Yet, in many ways, the dream remained the same across different circumstances: work hard, achieve financial stability, and provide your family with greater opportunities than you had.

If hard work fueled this dream, then education was the vehicle. If the pathway didn’t lead to college, it might lead to military service or apprenticing in an essential trade—choices that required discipline and sacrifice, but also promised respect and opportunity.

Today social media promotes images of those who seemingly have everything—big homes, expensive cars, luxurious vacations. Is this our ‘new’ metric of happiness or is there something beyond material wealth?

How has the American Dream changed? And what pathways allow today’s younger generation to achieve prosperity? I believe we need a new American Dream—one less focused on status and more on a life of meaning and purpose.

What if the new American Dream was about leaving a legacy of positive impact? What if we revived the adage, often attributed to the founder of Scouting America, that we should leave things better than we found them? The dream would shift from acquiring possessions to celebrating the difference we make in the lives of others. It would center on using our gifts and talents to meaningfully serve our families, workplaces and communities

The one constant is that education remains the critical pathway to this dream. It is not hyperbole to say that education is the bedrock of our democracy. To be truly educated is to be equipped to make sense of—and make a difference in—a big and complex world.

The American Dream should not be about simply doing better than the generation before. Instead, it should be about living with purpose, using our talents to serve others and leaving a lasting impact.