Month: August 2021

A study conducted in nine European countries shows that “Entrepreneurship education has a positive impact on the entrepreneurial mindset of young people, their intentions towards entrepreneurship, their employability and finally on their role in society and the economy.” That also implies that if higher education institutions offered more entrepreneurial-minded vocational education and training programmes for young people, Gen Z may re-consider investing in college.

What else does this mean for “traditional” colleges and universities? If they want to remain competitive, they need to adapt. Gen Zers’ demand for more affordable education leads to evolution of tuition pricing. More often than not learners tend to choose large institutions, often called “mega-universities, that are known for providing comparatively low-cost options as a result of complete rethinking of their tuition models. Some examples include subscription pricing, monthly payment plans and charging a flat rate that is inclusive of all fees and additional costs.

Another trigger that has forced some members of Gen Z to rethink the value of a traditional four-year college education is the impact of COVID-19 pandemic that expedited the shift towards blended and online education. Online learning is no longer considered to be an alternative option for adult learners, but is steadily growing in popularity among younger students as well. Moreover, even for those Generation Z students who choose to attend in-person classes, living off-campus is no longer unusual. One survey indicates that nearly 20 per cent of Generation Z college students who plan to attend a college intend to live at home and commute to campus.

While accommodation is no longer a “must” for contemporary institutions catering for Generation Z students, some services become more and more crucial. For example, being keenly aware of their mental health, as well as their emotional and psychological needs, this next generation of students needs support services like advising and counseling throughout their college journey. Aiming to respond to this, schools ramp up their mental health services, providing group therapy, workshops, yoga and a variety of other wellness-focused offerings.

The students starting college today are also more diverse than ever before, which means diversity and inclusion are becoming top priorities. Attentive to inclusion across race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity, they want higher education institutions to live up to those ideals as well. Students are no longer satisfied by rhetoric about the value of diversity and inclusion, but rather want to see actual progress in the form of initiatives and organizations. To adapt, some institutions have created distinct departments, or joined multi-school alliances, that promote diversity and inclusion.

All this said, a question arises – what can higher education professors do to teach, engage and serve this new unique generation that comes into the classroom? It looks like traditional teaching strategies, which have been used in the past decades – if not centuries – despite what generation is in the classroom, are not suitable for Gen Zers.

Generation Z is digital, so teachers are challenged to be skilled in different types of devices, programmes, and applications that can be integrated into their classes. However, the use of technology is not the only strategy that should be rethought. Educators should also search for new ways of assessment and methods to present material to students of Generation Z using new digital platforms. Teaching practice should be renewed, in order to connect Gen Z with a digital imprint to real environments, where problems can be addressed from new teaching methodologies with the help of technology.

The primary concern of those who have to teach Generation Z is how well the students are learning the material, with all the e-distractions affecting the classroom environment. Delivering course material with connected laptops, IPads and constant phone checking around could be challenging by itself, but teaching Gen Zers has its special issues as well. Recent studies report the Generation Z attention span at 8 seconds down from the Millennials’ 12 seconds. Keeping their focus requires varying methods of stimulation and connecting them to the learning process.

Today’s students refuse to be passive learners. They are not interested in simply showing up for class, sitting through a lecture, and taking notes to memorize for an exam later on. Instead, they expect to be fully engaged and to be a part of the learning process themselves. For example, Generation Z students are virtual gamers, and they love game challenges, which means Gen Z students can become very active and put forth a lot of concentration on the game. They can also be effective to allow students to share knowledge. At the same time, active and experiential learning activities, such as “one minute papers” that imply writing a short summary in teams or individually, can address the issue of the short attention span by helping the teacher to identify what needs to be reviewed.

While traditional methods of evaluation through exams and research papers solely tell professors what students have memorized for a specific exam or what they know about a specific topic, the new generation needs real-life knowledge that can be related to their job area. Besides, Generation Z students prefer to answer short, online exams, some of which can even be completed using smartphones.

Several studies show that Gen Z demand a more individual approach, more flexibility in work regarding assignments and schedules. While it could be challenging to provide individual training to each student, educators can nevertheless encourage works in teams – a learning method much preferred by Generation Z,  – which helps them foster more creativity.

Now, that the generation of young people who grew up with cell phones and had Instagram before starting high school comprise the body of the prospective student pool, colleges and universities need to think about a major transformation of the whole system of higher education. To appeal to Gen Zers, schools have to adjust to meet the expectations of Generation Z college students, and the entire higher education experience is changing as a result.

Last several years of higher education have seen a new generation of students enter their college-going years. This is the so-called Generation Z, also known as Centennials or Zoomers, those born sometime in the mid-1990s through to 2012, and like many generations before them, they have their unique characteristics and expectations. A diverse generation of technology natives that grew up in an era with numerous social issues, like school shooting, the BLM movement, and legalization of gay marriage, Generation Z pursues to make changes in our society. The question is: how will they influence the entire higher education system?

Like Millennials, Gen Z learners grew up in the times of a technological revolution, in the context of the internet and social networks. They are individuals who connect naturally to the virtual world and consider that part of their community. They are independent, self-taught and multitasking. According to Seemiller and Grace, they consider themselves loyal, thoughtful, compassionate, open-minded, and responsible. At the same time, they prefer to work alone and confess that they occasionally lack creativity.

Accustomed as they are to always stay connected and get answers to their questions immediately on Google, Zoomers value knowledge just as they value information. They seek constant information and entertainment in YouTube videos much as previous generations read magazines or watched TV. They are used to customization; and the culture of instant communication of texting and status updates means they expect faster feedback from everyone, on everything.

There are many reasons to believe that Generation Z students are going to become the most educated generation. They have higher high school graduation rates and lower dropout rates than those who came before them. In 2018, 57 per cent of 18 to 21-year olds were in college, compared with 52 per cent of Millennials, and 43 per cent of Gen Xers at similar ages.

However, unlike many previous generations of high school seniors, Gen Z learners are not so sure that obtaining a degree is a worthwhile investment. Instead, a different mindset is now prevailing. Gen Zers are more skeptical of higher education, as they want proof that pursuing a degree will be worth it in the long run. Besides, with so many institutions and courses offered both offline and online, students are in a position to have an incredibly large array of choices. This means schools will have to adjust both their programmes and teaching strategies to meet the expectations of today’s students.

Attitudes have definitely changed. Focused on value, Zoomers attach great importance to their choice of major. If earlier, students felt they could take their time to figure out what they wanted to do for a living (even if that meant pursuing a job opportunity that was entirely unrelated to their major), the enw generation is primarily focused on programmes pointing toward a specific career path. They tend to make their choice of higher education based on their passion, but make sure the graduation provides access to the career that interests them and rewards them financially. In general, their number one concern related to education is whether or not they will be able to find a good and well-paid job after graduation. Gen Zers are interested in practical subjects with clear paths to successful careers.

A shift toward practically-oriented majors results in fewer students in the humanities and arts, but more learners preferring health professions, computer science and video game development, engineering, biological science, among other fields. Whatever the major, programmes in higher education institutions today are more career-focused than ever. According to a survey conducted by ECMC Group and VICE Media, 74 per cent of polled high school students say they think only education that focuses on developing hard skills makes sense.

However, an interesting finding of the survey, applied by Dell Technologies to 12,000 high school and university students around the world, reveals that Gen Zers are unsure about their non-tech skills. 52 per cent commented that confident as they are about the technical skills they possess, they still worry about not having the right soft skills and experience for the workforce. Therefore, GenZ students express the need to develop such competencies as critical thinking, logical thinking, and decision-making, and expect schools to teach them how to learn, not just what to learn.

But even with these statistics in mind, the role of technology is central for Gen Z. While most Millennials remember a time when digital technology was not integral to our daily lives, Zoomers do not recall life before Internet. They have grown up with the digital world embedded in their daily activities, and digital media has become essential to their experience of the world and their expression of themselves.

The new generation of students is the first generation of true digital natives, coming of age with technological advances and mobile devices like the smartphones (indeed, 97 per centt of Gen Zers own smartphones, according to Nielsen research). As Gen Z individuals expect on-demand services that are available at any time, they naturally want to access everything, from campus maps to course materials, using their mobile devices. Higher education institutions respond by releasing simple, user-friendly mobile apps developed to be on the same page with the new generation of learners.

Being the first generation of incredibly tech-savvy individuals to attend college, Gen Zers expect the latest technology to be incorporated into their classroom experiences as well. This is confirmed by the report from Barnes & Noble College that discovers these learners crave interactive experiences and see a lot of value in tools like digital textbooks, online videos and game-based learning.

In the meantime, students of Generation Z are not inclined to spend money on expensive campus frills. Despite the economic recovery of the past decade, many of the young people can remember their parents living through the recession, and the issue of financial security continues to weigh on their minds.

This generation is particularly wary of how much it costs to obtain a degree and more willing to question the value of a degree and look for alternatives. More and more young people are not so sure a traditional four-year programme is what they need and whether or not it is worth the investment. While freshman college enrollment dropped by 16 per cent, matriculation in short-term credential classes over the last year increased by 70 per cent to nearly 8 million over the same period last year.

In fact, since Gen Zers have learned through digital technologies, rather than traditional learning such as classroom learning, and much of their previous learning experience comes from the internet, they are quite confident that they can learn from non-traditional sources and succeed. An ever-increasing number or Generation Z individuals do not see “traditional higher education” as a necessary ingredient for a successful career. Many of them see their business idea as a better return on investment than a college or university education. They consider skipping college altogether and joining a workforce instead, expecting to learn from peers on the job, or starting their career as entrepreneurs. The research shows that more than one-third of Gen Z students either already have their own business or plan to have one in the future.